A unified theory of adsorption and wetting using the percus yevick equation for hard spheres with surface adhesion

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Abstract
The recent analysis by Baxter of the Percus-Yevick model for an assembly of similar spherical particles with hard sphere repulsion plus a delta function attraction is generalised to an arbitrary number of components. We use the solution to study one component gas adsorption onto a planar substrate. The resulting adsorption isotherms exhibit monolayer or multilayer wetting according to the strengths of the interaction parameters. In particular, we find that multilayer wetting will not occur if the adsorbate/adsorbate interaction is sufficiently weak regardless of the strength of the adsorbate/adsorbent interaction. For weak adsorbate/ adsorbate interactions at low gas pressures the adsorption saturates at approximately a monolayer as the adsorbate/adsorbent interaction is increased.