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Thursday, January 16, 2020

Mass Accommodation Coefficients of Water on Organics from Complementary Photoacoustic and Light Scattering Measurements on Laser-Trapped Droplets

Sandra Roy, Matus E. Diveky, Ruth Signorell

The mass accommodation coefficient, αM, describes evaporation and condensation kinetics at the liquid–vapor interface. In spite of numerous experimental efforts, reliable values of αM are still not available for many substances. Here, we present a novel experimental technique, photothermal single-particle spectroscopy (PSPS), that allows for a robust retrieval of mass accommodation coefficients from three simultaneous independent measurements. PSPS combines resonant photoacoustic absorption spectroscopy with modulated Mie scattering measurements on single particles. We study the mass transport of water on organic aerosol droplets that are optically trapped using counter-propagating tweezers. We find the mass accommodation coefficient of water on a pure model organic that is fully miscible with water to be 0.021 at 296 K and to decrease by more than an order of magnitude when the temperature increases to 309 K. The experimentally observed temperature dependence of αM shows an Arrhenius behavior. Furthermore, the water content of the droplets is found to have a profound effect on αM. No concentration dependence of αM is observed at low water concentrations, while at elevated water concentrations, we observe a 5-fold increase in αM. The technique presented in this work has the potential to become a reliable method for the retrieval of αM values at liquid–vapor interfaces, which are essential for accurate global climate and pharmaceutical aerosol inhalation modeling, to mention but a few.

DOI

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