Long description

A surface is shown as a line. A scale shows that at the left hand side the surface is cold warms towards the right hand side where the surface is hot. At the left hand side, molecules are depicted as circles. Five molecules are adsorbed to the surface, with the intermolecular attraction between the molecule and the surface shown as wiggly lines. Further molecules are shown adsorbing to the adsorbed molecules to make a larger network of molecules. To the right of these molecules, at warmer temperatures, the figure shows these molecules have become activated and fixated, and the wiggly intermolecular attraction lines have become straight lines, depicting more stable bonds with the surface and each other. To the right of this, at warmer temperatures, the straight intermolecular bond lines have become wiggly intermolecular attraction lines and the molecules are being desorbed from the surface.