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- ItemSpinodal decomposition and collapse of a polyelectrolyte gel(Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2020) Celora, Giulia L.; Hennessy, Matthew G.; Münch, Andreas; Waters, Sarah L.; Wagner, BarbaraThe collapse of a polyelectrolyte gel in a (monovalent) salt solution is analysed using a new model that includes interfacial gradient energy to account for phase separation in the gel, finite elasticity and multicomponent transport. We carry out a linear stability analysis to determine the stable and unstable spatially homogeneous equilibrium states and how they phase separate into localized regions that eventually coarsen to a new stable state. We then investigate the problem of a collapsing gel as a response to increasing the salt concentration in the bath. A phase space analysis reveals that the collapse is obtained by a front moving through the gel that eventually ends in a new stable equilibrium. For some parameter ranges, these two routes to gel shrinking occur together.