Pattern formation during catalytic surface reactions at increased reaction pressures and imaging and prevention of meta-stable pitting corrosion of stainless steels in salt water.

达尔豪西表面反应成像小组正在提供创新技术来探索表面物理和化学相互作用的复杂性质。我们专注于理解催化反应和其他表面反应的基本问题，这些反应表现为自组织模式形成现象。深入了解固体表面的化学过程对于开发更好的材料非常重要，并且利用它们的动态特性将促进我们对完全不同的系统的理解，如股票市场或生物节律和时钟。我们将重点放在铂的一氧化碳氧化上，以阐明非线性模式形成动力学，研究确定性但不可预测的反应。这个简单的化学系统的美妙之处在于它体现了更复杂系统的各种现象。一个新的研究途径是发现当反应的热量开始影响图案进化时，在更高的压力下会发生什么。到目前为止，这些反应只在恒温条件下进行过研究。随着局部温度的不同，更复杂的行为将会进化。我们正在开发世界上独一无二的成像工具，以观察比以前研究过的更高压力和温度条件下的表面反应。

The Dalhousie Surface Reaction Imaging Group is providing innovative techniques to explore the complex nature of physical and chemical interactions on surfaces. We concentrate on understanding fundamental issues of catalytic and other surface reactions manifesting as self-organizing pattern forming phenomena. Insight into the chemical processes on solid surfaces will have great importance in developing better materials and exploiting their dynamic properties will foster our understanding for quite different systems like the stock market or biological rhythms and clocks. We focus attention on the carbon monoxide oxidation of Platinum to illuminate non-linear pattern formation dynamics, the study of deterministic yet unpredictable reactions. The beauty of this simple chemical system is it exemplifies the diverse phenomena of far more complex systems. A new avenue of research is to find what happens at higher pressures when the heat of the reaction begins to influence pattern evolution. Until now these reactions have only been investigated under constant temperature conditions. As the temperature becomes locally different, more complex behaviors will evolve. We are developing world unique imaging tools to observe surface reactions at higher pressure and temperature conditions than have previously been investigated. One spinoff of this approach will allow us to take advantage of the elevated reaction heat to create new rigid, highly sensitive, chemo-thermo-mechanical sensors to detect reaction rates. A target will be to design an inexpensive robust sensor for field operations, which could have far-reaching influence in many applications. Another spinoff of the newly developed tools is to directly visualize pitting corrosion on stainless steels and other materials in salt water in real-time. An important goal here is to find surface treatments to dramatically enhance their resistance to corrosion. We will extend our studies to alloys, including nitinol, which are also meaningful in biomedical applications. Progress in these areas will have a large impact on the durability of materials ranging from underwater tidal turbines to orthodontic wires and cardiovascular stents.