Home▸Chemistry & Materials▸Surface Catalysis: The Langmuir-Hinshelwood Mechanism

🧪 Surface Catalysis: The Langmuir-Hinshelwood Mechanism

Interactive 3D catalyst surface where users adjust gas concentrations and watch reactant molecules adsorb onto active sites, react, and desorb, with a coverage slider revealing rate-limiting saturation.

Chemistry & Materials3DModerate60 FPS

A catalyst lattice where CO and O₂ molecules drift down from the gas phase, stick to empty active sites, and react only when a CO and an oxygen atom end up on neighbouring sites — releasing CO₂ back into the gas.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Both reactants must adsorb before they can react — O₂ dissociates and needs two empty neighbouring sites, so an excess of one gas can flood the surface and starve the other, capping the reaction rate.

🎮 How to Use

Set CO and O₂ pressure, raise or lower temperature, and choose how densely active sites are packed. Watch coverage percentages and reaction rate respond, and see the surface tip into saturation.

💡 Did You Know?

This is exactly how a catalytic converter cleans car exhaust: platinum and palladium sites adsorb CO and O₂ so they can combine into CO₂ far faster than they ever would in free gas.

⚙ Under the hood

surface-catalysislangmuir-hinshelwoodadsorptioncatalysisreaction-kineticschemistry

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install