Due to the non-independence of entropy and thermodynamic volume for spherically symmetric black holes in the AdS spacetime, when applying the Ruppeiner thermodynamic geometry theory to these black holes, we often encounter an unavoidable problem of the singularity about the line element of thermodynamic geometry. In this paper, we propose a basic and natural scheme for dealing with the thermodynamic geometry of spherically symmetric AdS black holes. We point out that enthalpy, not internal energy, is the fundamental thermodynamic characteristic function for the Ruppeiner thermodynamic geometry. Based on this fact, we give the specific forms of the line element of thermodynamic geometry for Schwarzschild AdS (SAdS) black hole in different phase spaces and the results show that the thermodynamic curvatures obtained in different phase spaces are equivalent. It is shown that the thermodynamic curvature is negative which implies that the attractive interaction dominates between black hole molecules for the SAdS black hole. Meanwhile we also give an approximate expression of the thermodynamic curvature of the Schwarzschild black hole which indicates that the black hole is dominated by repulsion on low temperature region and by attraction on high temperature region.

We investigate the Hawking radiation cascade from the five-dimensional charged black hole with a scalar field coupled to higher-order Euler densities in a conformally invariant manner. We give the semi-analytic calculation of greybody factors for the Hawking radiation. Our analysis shows that the Hawking radiation cascade from this five-dimensional black hole is extremely sparse. The charge enhances the sparsity of the Hawking radiation, while the conformally coupled scalar field reduces this sparsity.

Considering the unexpected similarity between the thermodynamic features of charged AdS black holes and that of the van der Waals fluid system, we calculate the number densities of black hole micromolecules and derive the thermodynamic scalar curvature for the small and large black holes on the coexistence curve based on the so-called Ruppeiner thermodynamic geometry. We reveal that the microscopic feature of the small black hole perfectly matches that of the ideal anyon gas and that the microscopic feature of the large black hole matches that of the ideal Bose gas. More importantly, we investigate the issue of molecular potential among micromolecules of charged AdS black holes and point out explicitly that the well-known experiential Lennard-Jones potential is a feasible candidate to describe interactions among black hole micromolecules completely from a thermodynamic point of view. The behavior of the interaction force induced by the Lennard-Jones potential coincides with that of the thermodynamic scalar curvature. Both the Lennard-Jones potential and the thermodynamic scalar curvature offer a clear and reliable picture of microscopic structures for the small and large black holes on the coexistence curve for charged AdS black holes.