Kinetics of irreversible adsorption with a particle conformational change: A density expansion approach

The kinetics of the irreversible adsorption of particles that undergo a surface induced conformational change may be modeled as a random sequential adsorption of spreading disks. We analyze this process by expanding the governing kinetic equations in a power series of the particle density. In the limit where particles spread instantaneously upon adsorption, the coefficients in the density expansion depend only upon the particle spreading magnitude Σ. In the general case of a finite spreading rate, a renormalization is performed to improve the efficiency of the expansion and the coefficients become functions of Σ and a new variable ζ=ρ${\mathit{K}}_{\mathit{s}}$, where ρ is the density and ${\mathit{K}}_{\mathit{s}}$ is the relative rate of particle spreading. While they are most accurate at low to moderate densities, these expressions may be linked to the known asymptotic kinetics via interpolation formulas to give an approximate solution over the entire density regime, in good agreement with simulation and experiment. © 1996 The American Physical Society.