A new universal law for the Liesegang pattern formation

J Chem Phys. 2005 May 8;122(18):184707. doi: 10.1063/1.1893606.

Abstract

Classical regularities describing the Liesegang phenomenon have been observed and extensively studied in laboratory experiments for a long time. These have been verified in the last two decades, both theoretically and using simulations. However, they are only applicable if the observed system is driven by reaction and diffusion. We suggest here a new universal law, which is also valid in the case of various transport dynamics (purely diffusive, purely advective, and diffusion-advection cases). We state that p(tot) proportional X(c), where p(tot) yields the total amount of the precipitate and X(c) is the center of gravity. Besides the theoretical derivation experimental and numerical evidence for the universal law is provided. In contrast to the classical regularities, the introduced quantities are continuous functions of time.