Chemistry Catalog (ChemCat): An open data platform for reproducible plasma chemistry simulations

Plasma chemistry studies are notoriously hard to reproduce. The main reason is the lack of open data platforms to share full plasma chemistry (mechanism) data in the low-temperature plasma (LTP) community. This work introduces ChemCat, a new data platform that extends the recent work on LXCat 3 [1,2] to encompass full plasma chemistry datasets [3].

ChemCat defines a flexible and extensible JSON schema for representing plasma chemistries, including species and process definitions, references, and a variety of LTP data types such as cross sections, rate coefficients, and transport coefficients. This schema is a first step towards standardization, and facilitates ChemCat integration in new and existing modeling tools.

Additionally, we present a suite of online tools built around ChemCat, including a fast, browser-based 0D plasma modeling tool developed in Rust and WebAssembly. This tool enables users to reproduce 0D plasma chemistry simulations with a single click. Conference attendees will be able to reproduce a plasma simulation study on their (mobile) devices using ChemCat and this modeling tool.

All software that is produced as part of this project will be open-sourced on GitHub under the banner of the LXCat-project organization [4].

[1] demo.lxcat.net

[2] Carbone, E. et al. (2021). Atoms, 10.3390/atoms9010016

[3] www.chemcat.net

[4] https://github.com/LXCat-project