Investigation of organic oscillators by means of a multivariate coupled XAS/UV-Vis analysis

Chemical oscillators are systems in which the concentration of one or more chemical species undergoes a periodic time evolution. The periodic behaviour of the system is driven by an irreversible chemical reaction and is made possible by a series of competing chemical processes that may depend on an element that can exist in different oxidation states. Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) type oscillators exploit bromine chemistry and a metal redox switch such as the Fe(II)/Fe(III) couple to achieve periodicity. The aim of our project is to follow an iron-dependant BZ-type oscillator by means of coupled XAS/UV-Vis detection and to identify the nature and concentration time evolution of the key species through a multivariate analysis of the spectroscopic data. Our combined approach will allow to directly observe and quantify the different redox states of iron and bromine species involved in the various reaction steps.