SESAMI APP: An Accessible Interface for Surface Area Calculation of Materials from Adsorption Isotherms

Abstract

Statement of need Accurate characterization of surface area is critical for understanding a material's properties and performance. The most widely used approach to calculate a material's gravimetric surface area, i.e. surface area per unit mass, is the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method. 1 The BET method computes the surface area of a material given the adsorption isotherm of a probe gas (i.e., N2 or Ar) in that material. Many researchers either obtain the BET area from commercial software that comes with measurement equipment, or perform the analyses manually on a spreadsheet, which is time-consuming and nearly impossible for some types of isotherms. Furthermore, these two approaches lead to large variability in BET-calculated areas. 2 These challenges have motivated the development of programs for the automated and standardized calculation of BET areas. 2-6