Improving sensitivity and accuracy of pore structural characterisation using scanning curves in integrated gas sorption and mercury porosimetry experiments.

Gas sorption scanning curves are increasingly used as a means to supplement the pore structural information implicit in boundary adsorption and desorption isotherms to obtain more detailed pore space descriptors for disordered solids. However, co-operative adsorption phenomena set fundamental limits to the level of information that conventional scanning curve experiments can deliver. In this work, we use the novel integrated gas sorption and mercury porosimetry technique to show that crossing scanning curves are obtained for some through ink-bottle pores within a disordered solid, thence demonstrating that their shielded pore bodies are undetectable using conventional scanning experiments.