Menten Substrate Kinetics in Electroactive Polymer Films

Michaelis-Menten Substrate Kinetics in Electroactive Polymer Films 

Consider the situation of catalytic particles dispersed in a reasonably thin polymeric film, where the substrate/product reaction occurs via Michaelis-Menten kinetics. This problem is directly relevant to the associated problems of immobilized enzyme catalysis and diffusion/chemical reaction processes in chemical engineering. Aspects of the theory presented in here have recently been described by Albery and coworkers for enzyme electrodes. 

FIGURE 2.30. Schematic representation of a composite electrocatalytic system consisting of a dispersion of catalytic microparticles in a polymeric matrix. 

The differential equation describing transport and kinetics in the layer is given by 

In this expression kc denotes the catalytic rate constant (units s ), is the Michaelis constant (units mol cm ), and denotes the total catalyst concentration in the layer. If this expression is substituted into Eqn. 97 we obtain 

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