Formation, Clustering, and Atmospheric Impact of Clusterable Organic Compounds

Atmospheric aerosol particles have a critical impact on Earth’s radiative balance and human health. Oxygenated organic molecules play an important role in the formation and growth of aerosol particles.

To contribute to initial steps of particle formation, a compound must either condense from the gas to the particle phase or undergo cluster-phase proton-transfer or other chemical reaction.

I define a clusterable organic compound (COC) to be an oxygenated organic molecule which can participate stable cluster formation under atmospheric conditions.

Due to the limited knowledge of the formation, structures, and properties of COCs, the exact mechanisms for the formation of aerosol particles remain puzzling.

My vision to bridge this long-lasting knowledge gap is to implement a unique computational approach to tackle bottlenecks in studies of complex reaction mechanisms, to combine a versatile suite of quantum chemical methods to accurately investigate cluster formation and properties, and to combine the best qualities of mass spectrometry and matrix isolated vibrational spectroscopy to solve structures directly from the reaction chamber.

The scientific objectives are to 1) solve the role of dimerization-initiated autoxidation mechanism in COC formation, 2) develop an instrumentation capable to reveal molecular structures and properties of COCs, 3) determine the formation mechanisms and rates of COC containing particles, and 4) estimate the atmospheric impact of newly formed COC containing particles.

This project will establish the molecular-level foundation for future atmospheric research by solving how COCs form, what is their contribution to particle formation and properties, and what is their impact for our climate.

This research results highly accurate reaction kinetics and cluster thermodynamics parameters for atmospheric models, which are crucial to constrain the large uncertainty in climate predictions caused by small aerosol particles.