A Reaction-diffusion model of spatial pattern formation in electrodeposition

In this paper we deal with a reaction-diffusion system to model the coupling between surface morphology and surface composition, as a means of understanding the formation of morphological patterns found in electrodeposition (ECD). The discussion is restricted to the case of one chemical species adsorbed at the surface of the growing cathode and source terms for both the chemical and the morphological equations of a simple form. We investigate the nonlinear dynamics of the system from the analytical and numerical points of view. The stability analysis shows the initiation of spatial patterns induced by diffusion, i.e. the diffusion-driven or Turing instability phenomenon. The obtained simulations are in good agreement with experiments for the electrodeposition of Au-Cu alloys.