Dynamic catalysis oscillations

Chemical kinetics and dynamics, including enzyme catalysis, oscillating reactions, and polymerization reactions. 

Autocatalysis is a distinctive phenomenon while in ordinary catalysis the catalyst re-appears from the reaction apparently untouched, additional amounts of catalyst are actively produced in an autocatalytic cycle. As atoms are not interconverted during chemical reactions, this requires (all) the (elementary or otherwise essential) components of autocatalysts to be extracted from some external reservoir. After all this matter was extracted, some share of it is not introduced in and released as a product but rather retained, thereafter supporting and speeding up the reaction(s) steadily as amounts and possibly also concentrations of autocatalysts increase. At first glance, such a system may appear doomed to undergo runaway dynamics ( explosion ), but, apart from the limited speeds and rates of autocatalyst resupply from the environment there are also other mechanisms which usually limit kinetics even though non-linear behavior (bistability, oscillations) may not be precluded ... 

Astumian, R. D. Chock, P. B. Tsong, T. Y. Westerhoff, H. V. Effects of oscillations and energy-driven fluctuations on the dynamics of enzyme catalysis and free energy transduction. Phys. Rev. A 39, 6416-6435. 

The Bodenstein steady state approximation is widely applied in catalysis. At the same time this approximation is often not valid and the dynamics should be taken into accout. Transient kinetic modelling as well as oscillation reactions will be considered in Chapter 8. 

We have also discussed the formation of spatio-temporal patterns in non-variational systems. A typical example of such systems at nano-meter scales is reaction-diffusion systems that are ubiquitous in biology, chemical catalysis, electrochemistry, etc. These systems are characterized by the energy supply from the outside and can exhibit complex nonlinear behavior like oscillations and waves. A macroscopic example of such a system is Rayleigh-Benard convection accompanied by mean flow that leads to strong distortion of periodic patterns and the formation of labyrinth patterns and spiral waves. Similar nano-meter scale patterns are observed during phase separation of diblock copolymer Aims in the presence of hydrodynamic effects. The pattern s nonlinear dynamics in both macro- and nano-systems can be described by a Swift-Hohenberg equation coupled to the non-local mean-flow equation. 

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