Determining the Geometric Surface Area of Mesoporous Materials

Abstract

Specific surface area is an important property of porous materials and a crucial index in multiple disciplines, which is mainly measured using nitrogen isotherms and the Brunauer–Emmett-Teller (BET) equation. The BET surface area is remarkably higher than the geometric surface area, which is defined as the surface area of the crystal geometry structure. However, many studies directly use the BET surface area as the geometric surface area. We proposed a simple, general, and accurate method that only needs the nitrogen adsorption isotherm as the input to calculate the geometric surface area of mesoporous materials. The proposed method considers the adsorptive potential influences and the physical state of adsorbed nitrogen in estimating the surface area. We utilized 18 isotherms generated by molecular simulations and actual experiments to cover a wide range of materials, including minerals, catalysts, and carbon-based tubes, and validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Our results showed that the surface area determined by the proposed method is almost identical to the referenced geometric area. The surface area obtained by the proposed method can be typically considered a geometric surface area.