Traveling Nanoscale Structures in Reactive Adsorbates with Attractive Lateral Interactions

A novel type of traveling structures in surface chemical reactions is presented. These structures, resulting from the competition between reactions, diffusion, and the phase transition caused by attractive lateral interactions between adsorbed particles, are predicted to exist on submicrometer and nanometer scales. We show that internal fluctuations lead to a complex dynamics of interacting wave fragments in this system. [S0031-9007(98)07180-4]