OSCILLATORY REACTIONS ON SINGLE-CRYSTAL SURFACES

Heterogeneous catalytic reactions exhibit under certain conditions kinetic oscillations which have been investigated both with polycrystalline materials and with single crystal surfaces as catalysts. The present paper reviews single-crystal experiments conducted under isothermal, low pressure conditions (p<10(-3) mbar). Two different reaction systems have been investigated: catalytic CO oxidation on various Pt and Pd orientations and catalytic NO reduction on Pt(100) using CO, H-2, or NH3 as the reducing agent. The different reaction systems exhibit a wide variety of interesting phenomena which are well-known in nonlinear dynamics, for example, such as spatiotemporal pattern formation, the existence of Turing structures and the appearance of deterministic chaos, and chemical turbulence. The mechanistic steps leading to the observed phenomena have been investigated and appropriate mathematical models have been formulated and analyzed using bifurcation theory. The driving force for the rate oscillations has been shown to result from structural changes of the substrate in the case of catalytic CO oxidation on Pt surfaces, subsurface oxygen formation in the case of catalytic CO oxidation on Pd surfaces, and in the chemical reaction network described by a vacancy model in the case of the NO reduction reactions.