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Traveling composition waves on isothermal catalyst surfaces

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Abstract

Recent experiments have indicated the presence of traveling composition waves along catalytic surfaces, waves that are accompanied by (and have come to be associated with) crystallographic changes in the catalyst itself during the course of reaction. We show, however, that ancillary phenomena of this kind are not essential to the existence of traveling composition waves. In particular, we use Conley index arguments to show that, for a large family of classical catalytic mechanisms (taken with Fick-type diffusion along the catalyst surface), the corresponding reaction-diffusion equations already have the capacity to admit stable traveling waves.

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Feinberg, M., Terman, D. Traveling composition waves on isothermal catalyst surfaces. Arch. Rational Mech. Anal. 116, 35–69 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00375602

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