A study of the mechanism of adsorption of ethyl cellulose on silver powder

Abstract

The mechanism of adsorption and desorption of ethyl cellulose (EC) on and from silver powder was studied. After analysis with DSC, XPS and dynamic FT-IR, which could be heated by a program-controlled heater, applied to observe the states of pure EC and of EC adsorbed on silver powder, and also the thermal decomposition of EC from silver powder, the chemisorption bonding bridge between the oxygen atoms of EC and the silver atoms investigated. The differences in thermal decomposition between pure EC and EC adsorbed in silver powder were also studied. It was concluded that the chemisorption bonding between the oxygen atoms of EC and the silver atoms mainly involved the lone-pair electrons of the oxygen atoms on the EC chain and the outer empty 5 sp³ hybrid orbital of the silver. Because of the formation of this bridge, the bonds between neighboring carbon and oxygen atoms are weakened. As a result of this effect, the C-O bonds in the EC chain are broken more easily than the C-H bonds, which leads to the observation of -C-H- fragments in the upper space when EC adsorbed on silver is heated. When the same experiments were carried out on pure EC, almost all kinds of broken fragments of the EC molecule, including -C-H-, -C=O- and -C-O- appeared simultaneously.