Chemical Systems Involving Two Competitive Self-Catalytic Reactions

Self-catalytic reactions are chemical phenomena, in which a product catalyzes the reactions of substrates further to yield products. A significant amplification of product concentration occurs during the reactions in a dilute solution, which exhibit notable properties such as sigmoidal kinetics, seeding effects, and thermal hysteresis. Chemical systems involving two competitive self-catalytic reactions can be considered, in which the competitive formation of two products occurs, which is affected by environmental changes, subtle perturbations, and fluctuations, and notable chemical phenomena appear such as formation of different structures in response to slow/fast temperature changes, chiral symmetry breaking, shortcut in reaction time, homogeneous-heterogeneous transitions, and mechanical responses. Studies on such chemical systems provide understanding on biological systems and can also be extended to the development of novel functional materials.