Two-dimensional electrochemical turbulence during the electrodissolution of metal disk electrodes: Model calculations

Abstract

We present numerical studies of the spatio-temporal dynamics of disk electrodes with local limit cycle oscillations. The simulations are done with a realistic 3-D geometry of the electrochemical cell and disk-shaped working electrodes (WE). Spatio-temporal chaos is shown to exist from a critical electrode size onwards. It is analyzed by Karhunen–Loève decomposition and Hilbert transform. The former shows that the chaos becomes more complex with increasing system size, the latter allows features that generate the spatio-temporal complexity to be identified, namely, spatially extended 1-D phase defects and topological defects.