Absorption in chemistry is the process by which atoms, molecules, or radiant energy are taken up into the bulk volume of a material, distinguished from adsorption, which is confined to a surface. In a physical sense, absorption describes the uptake of a gas or solute throughout the phase of a liquid or solid, as in …
Absorption in chemistry is the process by which atoms, molecules, or radiant energy are taken up into the bulk volume of a material, distinguished from adsorption, which is confined to a surface. In a physical sense, absorption describes the uptake of a gas or solute throughout the phase of a liquid or solid, as in gas scrubbing and solvent extraction. In a spectroscopic sense, absorption refers to the attenuation of electromagnetic radiation as matter promotes electrons or excites vibrational and rotational modes, with the wavelength and intensity of absorption bands encoding molecular structure. Techniques such as ultraviolet-visible, infrared and Raman, and resonance spectroscopies exploit characteristic absorption to identify functional groups, determine concentration through the Beer-Lambert relationship, and probe vibronic coupling, often interpreted alongside density functional theory calculations of electronic structure. Absorption phenomena are central to analytical determination, optical sensing, photochemistry, and the design of light-harvesting and detector materials. New Developments in Chemistry publishes peer-reviewed research grounded in absorption processes and spectroscopy, including time-resolved and resonance vibrational analyses, ultraviolet-visible and infrared characterization of synthesized compounds, hyperpolarizability and natural bond orbital studies, and optical sensing of analytes in solution.
12 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.
The 12 articles above have been cited 413 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.
A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Absorption, linking to each citing work.