Theory of sorption hysteresis in nanoporous solids: Part I Snap-through instabilities

The sorption-desorption hysteresis observed in many nanoporous solids, at vapor pressures low enough for the the liquid (capillary) phase of the adsorbate to be absent, has long been vaguely attributed to changes in the nanopore structure, but no mathematically consistent explanation has been presented. The present work takes an analytical approach to account for discrete molecular forces in the nanopore fluid and proposes two related mechanisms that can explain the hysteresis at low vapor pressure without assuming any change in the nanopore structure. The first mechanism, presented in Part I, consists of a series of snap-through instabilities during the filling or emptying of non-uniform nanopores or nanoscale asperities. The instabilities are caused by nonuniqueness in the misfit disjoining pressures engendered by a difference between the nanopore width and an integer multiple of the thickness of a monomolecular adsorption layer. The second mechanism, presented in Part II, consists of molecular coalescence within a partially filled surface, nanopore or nanopore network. This general thermodynamic instability is driven by attractive intermolecular forces within the adsorbate and forms the basis to develop a unified theory of both mechanisms. The ultimate goals of the theory are to predict the fluid transport in nanoporous solids from microscopic first principles, and to determine the pore size distribution and internal surface area from sorption tests.