Steady state reactive kinetics on surfaces exhibiting defect structures

This paper considers the steady state situation of an active surface exposed to two species which may adsorb, 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. In addition, a simple model taking into account the local temperature and heat transfer into the bulk is also considered. A number of case studies are examined corresponding to different assumptions about the desorption and kinetic characteristics of the defect sites. The species profiles, their fluxes and curvatures, 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. The reaction-diffusion equations of these models were solved by the multigrid technique which shows promise of providing an efficient numerical procedure capable of handling practical large scale problems.