Surface potential adsorbates, effect

Commercial carbon black is a spherical colloidal form of nearly pure carbon particles and aggregates with trace amounts of organic impurities adsorbed on the surface. Potential health effects usually are attributed to these impurities rather than to the carbon itself. Soots, by contrast, contain mixmres of particulate carbon, resins, tars, and so on, in a nonadsorbed state. ... 

Thus, in the relatively simple case of oil in water emulsions, where a surface active agent such as a soap is used as the emulsifying agent, it is known that the soap adsorbed on the surface of the oil particles decreases the interfacial tension, thus stabilizing the emulsion. The adsorbed soap ions also give a net electrostatic charge to the dispersed oil droplets, serving to repel other oil droplets, with the net effect that flocculation is hindered (and stability is increased). It is even possible to measure the amount of adsorbed soap ions and to calculate the values of the surface potential. 

In both Navanax neurons (65) and an artificial phospholipid bilayer membrane (66). salicylic acid (1-30 mM) increased K" " permeability but decreased Cl- permeability resulting in a net Increase in membrane conductance. To account for the selective effect of salicylic acid (and other benzoic acids) on the two permeabilities, it was proposed that the anions of the organic acids adsorb to membranes to produce either a negative surface potential (66) or an increase in the anionic field strength of the membrane (47, 48). 

Despite these strong assumptions, the Poisson-Boltzmann theory describes electric double layers surprisingly well. The reason is that errors lead to opposite effects and compensate each other. Including non-coulombic interactions leads to an increase of the ion concentration at the surface and a reduced surface potential. On the other hand, taking the finite size of the ions into account leads to a lower ion concentration at the surface and thus an increased surface potential. A reduction of the dielectric permittivity due to the electric field increases its range but at the same time reduces the surface potential because less ions dissociate or adsorb. 

They believe that the results for the film obtained with an extremely high vacuum are representative for the behavior of a clean nickel surface. The opposite effects could be due to the influence of impurities adsorbed on the nickel surface in a moderate vacuum. This opinion is supported by the fact that the adsorption giving rise to a negative surface potential is very rapid, in accordance with experimental evidence about rates of adsorptions... 

The application of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for monitoring redox and other processes at metal-solution interfaces is illustrated by means of some recent results obtained in our laboratory. The detection of adsorbed species present at outer- as well as inner-sphere reaction sites is noted. The influence of surface interaction effects on the SER spectra of adsorbed redox couples is discussed with a view towards utilizing the frequency-potential dependence of oxidation-state sensitive vibrational modes as a criterion of reactant-surface electronic coupling effects. Illustrative data are presented for Ru(NH3)63+/2+ adsorbed electrostatically to chloride-coated silver, and Fe(CN)63 /" bound to gold electrodes the latter couple appears to be valence delocalized under some conditions. The use of coupled SERS-rotating disk voltammetry measurements to examine the kinetics and mechanisms of irreversible and multistep electrochemical reactions is also discussed. Examples given are the outer- and inner-sphere one-electron reductions of Co(III) and Cr(III) complexes at silver, and the oxidation of carbon monoxide and iodide at gold electrodes. 

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