Diffusion-controlled reactions with time-dependent surface reactivity

Denis S. Grebenkov; Yilin Ye

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arXiv · 2610.23017

Diffusion-controlled reactions with time-dependent surface reactivity

Denis S. Grebenkov·Yilin Ye

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Abstract

We investigate diffusion-controlled reactions on a reactive surface with time-dependent reactivity. Starting from a conventional formulation via diffusion equation with Robin boundary condition for the macroscopic concentration of particles, we aim at quantifying how temporal variations of reactivity affect the survival probability and the associated first-reaction time (FRT) of a single particle on the reactive surface. Using an adiabatic description, we first identify five long-time regimes of the first-reaction time distribution, ranging from exponential and stretched-exponential to power-law decay. In particular, sufficiently rapid decay of the reactivity leads to a nonzero probability of never reacting, despite diffusion in a bounded domain. Second, we provide a probabilistic reformulation of this problem and compare it with a different scenario of encounter-dependent reactivity. Our theoretical predictions are validated via extensive Monte Carlo simulations.

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Denis S. Grebenkov, Yilin Ye. 2026-10-16. Diffusion-controlled reactions with time-dependent surface reactivity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.23017

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