18

FREILING, CROCKER, AND ADAMS

not well understood. When the condensed and vaporized species are
identical, as in the case of condensing mercury, it is usually near unity.
When there is a change in species, as in the cases of P, condensing on

P, and of AS,O, condensing on AS,O3, it can be extremely low. In these

two cases!® it is less than 107", Apropos of the case of fallout, we have

recently obtained evidence for low evaporation coefficients of alkali
metals from fused oxides which indicates the likelihood of similarly
low condensation coefficients.
Whenthe condensation coefficient is incorporated into Fuchs’ equa-

tion, one finds the condensation rate to be
g Bi:

4

R+aA

ahR?+R+)

where S is the surface of the particle. If @ is very small (ahR? «R+X),
surface resistance to mass transfer predominates and the condensation
rate is

_

It is instructive at this point to consider the case of a volume V of

condensable molecules at concentration n; exposed to S square centimeters of condensing surface. If there is no reevaporation and first-

order kinetics can be assumed, the condensation rate is

Thi = adi F = Omi By
from which

few]

n; =n; exp (— -—

where n° is the initial concentration and

4vV.

Vv (2zm)"

w= oaS ~ aS

kT

is the mean molecular residence time in the vapor phase.
If reevaporation can occur the rate equation of the previous para-

graph must be modified. Again assuming first-order kinetics, this is
most simply done in terms of the mean residence time on the surface
t,. Letting (n,); denote the number of molecules per square centimeter

of surface, we can write

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