Accuracy verification of surface energy components measured by inverse gas chromatography

Inverse gas chromatography (IGC) measures the retention times of probes which are then used to calculate the surface properties of solids. No method is available to verify how much the measured values are close to their accurate values. According to the chromatographic adhesion law, the accurate determination of the dispersive retention factor (KCH2a) is a necessary prerequisite to obtain accurate surface components. Employing two equations in this paper, %ΔγSd, which is the percentage deviation of dispersive component (γSd) from its accurate value (γS0d), was correlated firstly to %CVlnKCH2a, the percentage coefficient of variation of lnKCH2a, and secondly to FEKCH2a, the factor error of KCH2a, via two linear equations. The first equation is to outline the upper and lower limits of the uncertainty range of γS0d, and the second equation is to estimate γS0d. To minimize the uncertainty range of γS0d to less than ±5%, %CVlnKCH2a should be less than 0.7%. Then considering the sign of FEKCH2a narrows the uncertainty range to either its upper or lower half.