Period Doubling and Chaos of Spontaneous Oscillatory Phenomena on Iron

Summary.  A new self-oscillating system introducing spontaneous oscillatory phenomena on iron in a sulfuric acid solution of hydrogen peroxide is discussed. This phenomenon can be explained by a continuous oscillation between the active and passive state of iron. Unlike other published systems that only show one-peak oscillations, the potential of iron shows highly complex dynamics: depending on the concentration of hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid, a period doubling and non-periodic oscillations in a self-oscillating system were observed for the first time. The reactions were analyzed by methods based on chaos theory and could finally be identified as an example of deterministic chaos. Received April 24, 2001. Accepted May 7, 2001