Response of a catalytic reaction to periodic variation of the CO pressure: Increased CO₂ production and dynamic phase transition

We present a kinetic Monte Carlo study of the dynamical response of a Ziff-Gulari-Barshad model for CO oxidation with CO desorption to periodic variation of the CO pressure. We use a square-wave periodic pressure variation with parameters that can be tuned to enhance the catalytic activity. We produce evidence that, below a critical value of the desorption rate, the driven system undergoes a dynamic phase transition between a CO₂ productive phase and a nonproductive one at a critical value of the period and waveform of the pressure oscillation. At the dynamic phase transition the period-averaged CO₂ production rate is significantly increased and can be used as a dynamic order parameter. We perform a finite-size scaling analysis that indicates the existence of power-law singularities for the order parameter and its fluctuations, yielding estimated critical exponent ratios β∕ν≈0.12 and γ∕ν≈1.77. These exponent ratios, together with theoretical symmetry arguments and numerical data for the fourth-order cumulant associated with the transition, give reasonable support for the hypothesis that the observed nonequilibrium dynamic phase transition is in the same universality class as the two-dimensional equilibrium Ising model.