Chemical reactions with nonlinear kinetic behavior can give rise to a remarkable set of spatiotemporal phenomena. These include periodic and chaotic changes in concentration, traveling waves of chemical reactivity, and stationary spatial (Turing) patterns. Although chemists were initially skeptical of the existence and the relevance of these phenomena, much progress has been made in the past two decades in characterizing, designing, modeling, and understanding them. Several nonlinear dynamical phenomena in chemical systems provide simpler analogues of behaviors found in biological systems.

http://hopf.chem.brandeis.edu/pubs/pub236%20rep.pdf

Nonlinear Chemical Dynamics: Oscillations, Patterns, and Chaos

Electrochemical Reaction Dynamics - A Review

Catalysis of chemical reactions by electrodes

Many electrochemical systems are known to exhibit complex non-linear behaviour such as spontaneous oscillations of current or potential, complex and chaotic oscillations and associated bifurcation scenarios and spatial pattern formation when maintained far from thermodynamic equilibrium. We discuss the origin of electrochemical oscillations and argue that most of the currently known electrochemical oscillators belong to one of two different classes. These classes are distinguished by the different types of electrical control under which oscillations are observable and are characterized by qualitatively different impedance spectra. The possibility of observing electrochemical oscillations under truly potentiostatic conditions is discussed briefly, as well as the role of global coupling, due to the electroneutrality condition in the formation of spatiotemporal patterns on the electrode surface.

Lubomír Pospíŝil

Papers

Thiocyanate electrocatalysis of the reduction of In(III)

On the estimation of the reversible halfwave potential