Thermodynamics and Dynamics of Adsorption of Metal Complexes on Surfaces from Supercritical Solutions

Abstract The chapter is on the adsorption phenomena of metal complexes on substrates in the presence of SCFs important in a wide variety of applications ranging from synthesis of nanostructured materials to extraction of metals from surfaces. After describing the thermodynamics of adsorption for fluids and supercritical mixtures, the studies in the literature on adsorption in the presence of SCFs are summarized and discussed. The techniques to measure the adsorption isotherms of metal complexes on porous substrates in the presence of SCFs are described. Primarily, batch adsorption, frontal analysis chromatography and pulse chromatography techniques are covered in detail. The data in the literature on adsorption isotherms of metal complexes are discussed. The equations for modeling the kinetics of batch adsorption of metal complexes are provided together with the solutions of these equations for prediction of data in the literature on kinetics of adsorption of a ruthenium complex on a porous carbon in the presence of scCO 2 .