Interfacial phenomena lie at the heart of many technical, medical and scientific applications. Any system involving surfaces is not completely understood with out knowing the nature of adsorbing species and the extent of coverage, whether the surface active species were purposely added or found as contaminants. For fundamental studies in adsorption to have an impact on practical applications (such as strategic metals recovery), new quantitative methods and new qualitative insights are required. Spectroscopy can simultaneously provide quantitative and qualitative determinations, i.e., speciation. the adsorption processes on oxide at solid-liquid interfaces will be studied by Infrared (IR) and UV-Visible (UV-Vis) Attenerated total Reflection (ATR) spectroscopy which can provide molecular-level information. Particular emphasis will be placed on identification of the species and conditions present at such interfaces. It is planned to examine a) how the reactivity of adsorbed species may be different in the interfacial region, due to excess concentration, steric constraints, and anisotropic polarity; and b) how changes in conformation, tautomerization, oligomerization, or ionization equilibria will affect kinetics.
