Adsorption-induced surface normal relaxation of a solid adsorbent

TL;DR

This paper studies how thermal fluctuations influence the deformation of a solid surface during gas adsorption, revealing conditions for bistability and transition times between stable states.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of thermal fluctuation effects on adsorption-induced surface relaxation and derives conditions for bistability in deformable adsorbents.

Findings

Thermal fluctuations significantly affect surface normal relaxation.

Conditions for coexistence of two stable adsorption states are established.

Mean transition times between stable states are derived.

Abstract

We investigate adsorption of a gas on the flat surface of a solid deformable adsorbent taking into account thermal fluctuations and analyze in detail the effect of thermal fluctuations on the adsorbent deformation in adsorption. The condition for coexistence of two states of a bistable system of adsorbed particles is derived. We establish the specific properties of the adsorption-induced surface normal relaxation of an adsorbent caused by thermal fluctuations. The mean transition times between two stable states of the bistable system are derived in the parabolic approximation and in the general case.