Kinetics of Catalysis with Surface Disorder

TL;DR

This paper investigates how surface disorder impacts catalytic reactions by modeling adsorption rate variability, deriving kinetic equations, and providing exact solutions for correlation functions, enhancing understanding of heterogeneous catalysis dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach by mapping disordered catalytic systems onto a kinetic Ising model and derives exact solutions for correlation functions.

Findings

Good agreement between kinetic equations and simulations.

Derived exact time-dependent correlation functions.

Analyzed effects of monomer desorption on reaction dynamics.

Abstract

We study the effects of generalised surface disorder on the monomer-monomer model of heterogeneous catalysis, where disorder is implemented by allowing different adsorption rates for each lattice site. By mapping the system in the reaction-controlled limit onto a kinetic Ising model, we derive the rate equations for the one and two-spin correlation functions. There is good agreement between these equations and numerical simulations. We then study the inclusion of desorption of monomers from the substrate, first by both species and then by just one, and find exact time-dependent solutions for the one-spin correlation functions.