Comparison of Dorris–Gray and Schultz methods for the calculation of surface dispersive free energy by inverse gas chromatography

Inverse gas chromatography (IGC) is an important technique for the characterization of surface properties of solid materials. A standard method of surface characterization is that the surface dispersive free energy of the solid stationary phase is firstly determined by using a series of linear alkane liquids as molecular probes, and then the acid–base parameters are calculated from the dispersive parameters. However, for the calculation of surface dispersive free energy, generally, two different methods are used, which are Dorris–Gray method and Schultz method. In this paper, the results calculated from Dorris–Gray method and Schultz method are compared through calculating their ratio with their basic equations and parameters. It can be concluded that the dispersive parameters calculated with Dorris–Gray method will always be larger than the data calculated with Schultz method. When the measuring temperature increases, the ratio increases large. Compared with the parameters in solvents handbook, it seems that the traditional surface free energy parameters of n-alkanes listed in the papers using Schultz method are not enough accurate, which can be proved with a published IGC experimental result.