Regular Article
Characterization of Silicon Nitride Surface in Water and Acid Environment: A General Approach to the Colloidal Suspensions

https://doi.org/10.1006/jcis.1996.0320Get rights and content

Abstract

The characterization of the silicon nitride surface in water in an acid environment has been derived and discussed and may be considered as a general approach to the colloidal system. This research is based on a recently published experimental method and on a theory that were developed to obtain the average size and the number of agglomerates of a colloidal suspension and that then were applied to the Si3N4/H2O (l) dispersed system. The charged (SiNH+3, SiOH+2, and SiO) and neutral (SiNH2and SiOH) site distributions on the Si3N4surface were investigated when the liquid phase pH ranged from 2 to 7 and the solid weight concentration ranged from 30 to 60%. At chemical equilibrium, once the usual mass and charge balances for the considered chemical species had been adopted, the surface description was achieved under two different hypotheses on the adsorption and desorption kinetics, that is, discussing the application of the principle of detailed balance (PDB) and/or of thermodynamic equilibrium (TDE) only to the H+flux. As the behaviors of all chemical species are very difficult to represent, the PDB or TDE condition replaces the usual empirical equation to fix the mass of all surface sites. As the kinetics are unknown, the PDB led to a parametrical analysis, according to the rate constant values of the H+charging reactions. As a result, the picture of the silicon nitride surface was not consistent. When only the TDE was applied, a sort of kinetic mass–balance law was derived, dependent on the liquid phase pH. This information, added to the other balance equations, made it possible to describe qualitatively the surface. The description agreed both with experimental analysis of silicon nitride aqueous suspensions and with surface chemistry.

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