Vapour Pressure Measurements with A Thermobalance

The ‘Modified Entrainment Method’ developed by Faktor et al. [1] is an attractive yet not very popular method to determine vapour pressures in the range of 0.002 to 0.1 bar at 10–1000°C. The method consists of evaporating a solid or liquid from a small bulb through a capillary into a flowing inert gas, e.g. argon. The vapour pressure of the sample is related to the rate of evaporation and some easily controlled experimental parameters. In the present paper a new convenient experimental set-up is described and its use to study the decomposition of metal complexes is illustrated.