DIFFUSIVE INSTABILITIES AND CHEMICAL REACTIONS

Abstract

Diffusive instabilities provide the engine for an ever increasing number of dissipative structures. In this class autocatalytic chemical systems are prone to generate temporal and spatial self-organization phenomena. The development of open spatial reactors and the subsequent discovery in 1989 of the stationary reaction–diffusion patterns predicted by Turing [1952] have triggered a large amount of research. This review aims at a comparison between theoretical predictions and experimental results obtained with various type of reactors in use. The differences arising from the use of reactions exhibiting either bistability of homogeneous steady states or a single one in a CSTR are emphasized.