Glossary: Capillary Condensation

The process by which a liquid adsorbate phase is drawn into a pore. Most commonly applied to mesoporous materials (see mesopore). This process exhibits irreversibility between adsorption and desorption generally assumed to be due to the difference in contact angle of the liquid phase with the pore wall. The Kelvin equation, which associates the vapor relative pressure with pore radius, is used to calculate pore size distribution from isothermal measurements of the desorption process.