Molecular Characterization of Aerosols: Nucleation and Growth
A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Aerosols".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 August 2022) | Viewed by 357
Special Issue Editors
Interests: mass spectroscopy; laser spectroscopy; quantum and computational chemistry; particle nucleation and growth; atomic and molecular clusters; atmospheric aerosols; new particle formation
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Atmospheric aerosols can affect the Earth’s radiative balance and thus impact climate change and human health in multiple ways; however, they are complex and therefore challenging to model. Having a detailed understanding of how new aerosol forms will guide the models and reduce uncertainty in climate change predictions as well as the control of environmental pollution. Despite significant research efforts during the past decades, there is still one enigma that has long perplexed scientists, i.e., how new particles form in the atmosphere.
The new particle formation (NPF) route has been reported to contribute to more than 50% of aerosol particles, and researchers now understand how aerosols can grow from small clusters into sizes large enough to work as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) to seed cloud droplets. However, those same theories, mainly derived from classical nucleation theory (CNT), fail to explain how the initial particle core develops. Researchers have chipped away at the nucleation mystery far enough to identify small clusters of certain types of molecules, including sulfuric acid, nitric acid, bisulfate ion, oxidized organics, ammonia, amines, sea salts, water, etc., as the key step. Yet, the underlying molecular-level mechanism for why some certain species, for example, oxidized organic molecules, form clusters with sulfuric acid and/or bisulfate over others remains unclear. This hinders the development of improved model parameters for accurately predicting aerosol particle formation.
To improve our molecular-level understanding of aerosols, Atmosphere is now launching a Special Issue focusing on the fundamental understanding of what is happening in the initial steps of atmospheric aerosols at the molecular level. We cordially invite you to contribute reviews, communications, and/or articles to this Special Issue, representing your research expertise. Experimental and theoretical works, or a combination of both, are welcome. Topics in this Special Issue will include all aspects that relate to aerosol nucleation and growth, such as new aerosol techniques and methodology development, structural characterization of aerosol particles and clusters as well as their formation mechanisms, and physicochemical properties of aerosol particles.
Dr. Gaolei Hou
Prof. Dr. Hong-Bin Xie
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- Atmospheric aerosols
- Particle nucleation and growth
- New particle formation
- Classical nucleation theory
- Molecular and ionic clusters
- Critical nucleus
- Thermodynamics
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