Control of chaos in an electrochemical cell

We report control of chemical chaos observed during the electrodissolution of a rotating copper disk in a sodium acetate--acetic acid buffer. An adaptation of a simple recursive proportional-feedback control strategy, generally applicable to systems well described by one-dimensional maps, was used to stablize the chaotic response of the system on an unstable period-1 orbit. The successive minima in the measured anodic current generated a return map that was used to characterize the dynamics, and the control algorithm prescribed small changes in the anodic potential to affect the control.