Electrical coupling of individual electrocatalytic oscillators

Abstract

The catalytic electro-oxidation of some small organic molecules is known to display kinetic instabilities, which reflect on potential and/or current oscillations. Under oscillatory conditions, those systems can be considered electrocatalytic oscillators and, therefore, can be described by their amplitude, frequency, and waveform. Just like mechanical oscillators, the electrocatalytic ones can be coupled and their dynamics can be changed by setting different coupling parameters. In the present work, we study the unidirectional coupling of electrocatalytic oscillators, namely, those comprehending the catalytic electro-oxidation of methanol and formic acid on polycrystalline platinum in acidic media under potentiostatic control. Herein, we explore two different scenarios (the coupling of compositionally identical and non-identical oscillators) and investigate the effects of the master's identity and of the coupling constant on the slave's dynamics. For the master (methanol)–slave (methanol) coupling, the oscillators exhibited phase lag synchronization and complete phase synchronization. On the other hand, for the master (formic acid)–slave (methanol) coupling, the oscillators exhibited complete phase synchronization with phase-locking with a 2:3 ratio, complete phase synchronization with phase-locking with a 1:2 ratio, phase lag synchronization, and complete phase synchronization. The obtained results suggest that both the master's identity and the coupling constant (sign and magnitude) are parameters that play an important role on the coupled systems, in such a way that even for completely different systems, synchronization could emerge by setting a suitable coupling constant. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report concerning the electrical coupling of hidden N-shaped-negative differential resistance type systems.