Strong electrostatic adsorption, metals onto

Strong Electrostatic Adsorption of Metals onto Catalyst Supports... 

On the other hand, both the PTA and the PdTA exhibit the volcano shape of uptake versus pH characteristic of strong electrostatic adsorption (Regalbuto 2007). Since the carbon does not adsorb either noble metal to an appreciable extent in the high pH range, a pH of 11 was employed for adsorption onto physical mixtures and onto the carbon supported cobalt oxide. 

J.R. Regalbuto, 2007, Strong Electrostatic Adsorption of Metals onto Catalyst Supports, in Catalyst Preparation Science and Engineering, J.R. Regalbuto, ed., Taylor and Francis/CRC Press, 2007... 

While it is possible to model ion adsorption reasonably well on the basis of these simple models, open questions remain. Experiment, electronic structure calculations and simulations point towards a substantial adsorption energy of water on metal surfaces. Simulations show that the solvent barrier can be strong enough to prohibit ion adsorption. Obviously computer modeling of the adsorption of ions from aqueous solution onto metal surfaces suffers from the present inability to describe the delicate balance between electrostatic, steric, and electronic effects in one (computationally feasible) model. Currently, the biggest problem that awaits solution is the adequate calculation of the ion-metal interactions from quantum mechanics. 

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