Surface Restructuring, Kinetic Oscillations, and Chaos in Heterogeneous Catalytic Reactions

Kinetic oscillations in catalytic reactions on single-crystal surfaces often result from the interplay of the purely chemical reaction steps and adsorbate-induced surface restructuring. A classical example is CO oxidation on Pt(100). We survey evolution of the models used to simulate this reaction and show how it can be described self-consistently by employing Monte Carlo simulations combined with the lattice-gas model, taking into account substrate-substrate, substrate-adsorbate and adsorbate-adsorbate lateral interactions. Under the reactive conditions, this approach predicts formation of mesoscopic restructured well ordered islands with atomically sharp boundaries.