KINETICS OF A MONOMER MONOMER MODEL OF HETEROGENEOUS CATALYSIS

The kinetics of an irreversible monomer-monomer model of heterogeneous catalysis is examined. In this model, two reactive species, A and B, absorb and stick to single sites of a catalytic substrate. Surface reactions are assumed to occur only between dissimilar species which are nearest neighbours on the substrate. The kinetics of the process is studied in the reaction-controlled limit, where the adsorption occurs readily so that the process is limited by the reaction rate. We map the monomer-monomer model of heterogeneous catalysis on to a kinetic Ising model and solve the model exactly in one dimension, where the dynamics tums out to be a superposition of zero-temperature Glauber spin flip dynamics and infinite-temperature Kawasaki spin exchange dynamics. Finally, we discuss the monomer-monomer processes with desorption.