Breakdown of Langmuir Adsorption Isotherm: Adsorptions at Small Scales

For more than a century, monolayer adsorptions in which adsorbate molecules and adsorbing sites behave ideally have been successfully described by Langmuir adsorption isotherm. For example, the amount of adsorbed material, as a function of concentration of the material which is not adsorbed, obeys Langmuir's equation. In this paper we argue this relation is valid only for macroscopic (large enough) systems. However, when particle numbers of adsorbate molecules and/or adsorbing sites are small, Langmuir's model fails to describe the chemical equilibrium of the system. This is because the kinetics of forming, or the probability of observing, occupied sites arises from two-body interactions, and as such, oughts to include cross-correlations between particle numbers of the adsorbate and adsorbing sites. The effect of these correlations, as reflected by deviations in predicting composition when correlations are ignored, increases with decreasing particle numbers and becomes substantial when only few adsorbate molecules, or adsorbing sites, are present in the system. In addition, any change that augments the fraction of occupied sites at equilibrium (e.g., smaller volume, lower temperature, or stronger adsorption energy) further increases the discrepancy between observed properties of small systems and those predicted by Langmuir's theory. In contrast, for large systems these cross-correlations become negligible, and as a result, allow the concentration of each component to be considered independently when expressing properties involving two-body processes. By applying statistical mechanics concepts, we derive a general expression of the equilibrium constant for adsorption. It is also demonstrated that in ensembles in which total numbers of particles are fixed, the magnitudes of fluctuations in particle numbers alone, can predict the average chemical composition of the system. Moreover an alternative adsorption equation, predicting the average fraction of occupied sites from the value of the equilibrium constant, is proposed. All derived relations and predictions were tested against results obtained by Monte Carlo simulations.