Two-dimensional electrochemical turbulence during the electrodissolution of metal disk electrodes: Model calculations

We present numerical studies of the spatio-temporal dynamics of disk electrodes with local limit cycle oscillations. The simulations are done with a realistic 3-D geometry of the electrochemical cell and disk-shaped working electrodes (WE). Spatio-temporal chaos is shown to exist from a critical electrode size onwards. It is analyzed by Karhunen-Loève decomposition and Hilbert transform. The former shows that the chaos becomes more complex with increasing system size, the latter allows features that generate the spatio-temporal complexity to be identified, namely, spatially extended 1-D phase defects and topological defects.