Evolution of reactions on surfaces exhibiting defect structures

This paper considers the time and spatial dependent behavior of an active surface exposed to two reactants which may diffuse on the surface, desorb, and also react. The surface is assumed to contain defect structures corresponding to either inherent lattice faults or foreign material on the surface. A number of case studies are examined corresponding to different assumptions about the desorption and kinetic characteristics of the defect sites. The surface concentration profiles are examined to gain physical insight into the competing surface processes. The net effect of surface defects on chemical production rates was examined by integrating the local production rate over a test region on the surface. Of special interest was the study of the poisoning effect of the product species on the diffusion and reaction of the reactants. The reaction-diffusion equations of the models were solved by the alternating direction collocation technique which shows promise for providing an efficient numerical procedure capable of handling practical large scale problems.