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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Patterning via Optical Saturable Transitions - Fabrication and Characterization
Published on: December 11, 2014
Target-wave to spiral-wave pattern transition in a discrete Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction driven by inactive resin
Guanqun Wang1, Qingsheng Wang, Peng He
1Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-3122, USA.
Abstract:
Wave pattern formation and transition in chemical and biochemical reaction systems can reveal the system properties. We investigate the pattern transition from target waves to spiral waves upon the increment of inactive beads in a discrete system model, where ion-exchange resin loaded with Belousov-Zhabotinsky catalyst corresponds to the active beads. The results show that inactive beads slow the propagation speed of target waves and increase the wave frequency. As the population of inactive beads increases, clusters are formed, which then break waves into segments where bounded spiral pairs are generated and separated into individual spirals. From this observation, we conclude that the population of inactive resin beads acts as the bifurcation parameter controlling the wave pattern transition from targets to spirals.
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