Surface area Surface area The surface area of a solid object is a measure of the total area that the surface of the object occupies. The mathematical definition of surface area in the presence of curved surfaces is considerably more involved than the definition of arc length of one-dimensional curves, or of the surface area for polyhedra (i.e., objects with flat polygonal faces), for which the surface area is the sum of the areas of its faces. Smooth surfaces, such as a sphere, are assigned surface area using their representation as parametric surfaces. This definition of surface area is based on methods
BET theory physical adsorption of gas molecules. The total surface area formula_19 and the specific surface area formula_20 are given by where formula_5 is in units of volume which are also the units of the monolayer volume of the adsorbate gas, formula_24 is Avogadro's number, formula_25 the adsorption cross section of the adsorbing species, formula_26 the molar volume of the adsorbate gas, and formula_27 the mass of the solid sample or adsorbent. The BET theory can be derived similarly to the Langmuir theory, but by considering multilayered gas molecule adsorption, where it is not required for a layer to be completed before