Affiliation: | a Department of Organic Chemistry, University of Florence, Via G. Capponi 9, 50121 Florence, Italy b Max Planck Institut für Kolloid- und Grenzflächenforschung, Rudower Chaussee 5, D-12489 Berlin-Adlershof, Germany |
Abstract: | Surface relaxation processes of liquid solutions, under not-far-from-equilibrium conditions, are interpreted from a phenomenological point of view by application of the theory of distributed systems. In the case of diffusion-controlled adsorption, exact analytical expressions describe the transient responses of bulk concentration and dynamic surface tension, consequent to trapezoidal pulses of relative surface area. The mathematical treatment shows that surface responses have a definite physical significance, as they manifest a constitutive property of the system, i.e. the surface dilational modulus. |