Simple Chemomechanical Process for Self-Generation of Rhythms and Forms

We show that cross-coupling between the geometrical changes and the chemical reaction-diffusion regimes within a piece of gel embedded in a stationary reactive medium kept far from equilibrium can destabilize the trivial steady state and lead to spatiotemporal dissipative structures. The involved physical processes are the spatial bistability and the swelling properties of the gel. As an illustration of this morphogenetic process, we show that a sphere of gel immersed within such a medium with autocatalytic properties can exhibit periodic radius pulsations, the amplitude of which are controlled by chemistry.