Effect of electric field on Turing patterns in a microemulsion

Abstract

Turing structures are studied in the Belousov–Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction confined in an AOT microemulsion and exposed to an external electric field. The structures change their dynamics influenced by the induced flow from an initial stationary state to a time dependent behavior. By means of dimensionless analysis, using the Pi Buckingham theorem, we obtain a linear correlation between the dimensionless factors associated with the difference of voltage and the pattern induced velocity. The experimental results were complemented with numerical simulations of a two variable model that incorporates the migration of the ionic compounds due to the applied electric field.