Electrochemical Oscillators as Model-Systems in Applications of Synchronization Engineering

Rhythmic biological cycles are composed of interconnected and hierarchal dynamic processes resulting in spontaneous formation of spatiotemporal patterns. The ability to organize and finely manipulate these complex structures open the possibility to suppress specific brain diseases, as pathological neuronal synchronization in epilepsy, or even influencing circadian and metabolic cycles which are of the utmost importance for proper functioning of biochemical reactions in living beings. However, establishing spatiotemporal patterns in biological systems is a challenging task. The main difficulties lay on real-time measure of molar concentration of complicated molecules, like enzymes; slow time-scale of the essential variables; fragility to external perturbations; and rapid degradation of the system. These limitations are overcome by the demonstration of the feasibility of using electrochemical oscillators as biomimetic and systems-model in order to test controlling methodologies developed in synchronization engineering 1-3. Large collections of nonlinear dynamical ensembles were built as multi-electrode arrays based on the anodic dissolution of nickel in acidic media. Spatiotemporal patterns associated with individual phase responses for each electrochemical oscillator were controlled using closed and open-loop controls. The first approach (closed-loop) indicates that stable steady states can be effectively destabilized to restore dynamic behavior when a simple feedback factor is introduced in the diffusive coupling 1-2. A feeble deviation of the coupling drastically shrinks the amplitude death regions in the parameters domain. Different topologies were studied which verify the controllability of the technique 2. The second control (open-loop) was used to selectively assign ensemble subgroups into spatiotemporal patterns with multiple phase clusters without feedback 3. A connection between the phases and natural frequencies of a collection of dynamical oscillators is presented which confirms the possibility of storing information that is encoded in the ensembleby weak perturbations; vide the figure bellow for the electrochemical design of the word “OK”.