Particle adsorption under irreversible conditions: kinetics and jamming coverage

Irreversible adsorption of protein and colloid particles at solid/liquid interfaces was analysed theoretically. The expression describing the surface mass balance equation was discussed which can be used as boundary condition for the bulk mass transfer equation. Analytical kinetic equations were derived in the limit of short and long adsorption time. It was shown that the crucial role in the long-time expressions plays the maximum (jamming) coverage which can be derived numerically by applying the random sequential adsorption approach. The results obtained by using this model were discussed in the case of spheres and spheroids. Methods of extending results obtained for hard (noninteracting) particles to interacting particles were also presented. It was demonstrated that the electrostatic double-layer interactions decreased considerably the maximum coverage and influenced the structure of the adsorbed particle mono-layer analysed quantitatively in terms of the pair correlation function. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.