RESUMO
The heterogeneous interactions of gas molecules on solid particles are crucial in many areas of science, engineering and technology. Such interactions play a critical role in atmospheric chemistry and in heterogeneous catalysis, a key technology in the energy and chemical industries. Investigating heterogeneous interactions upon single levitated particles can provide significant insight into these important processes. Various methodologies exist for levitating micron sized particles including: optical, electrical and acoustic techniques. Prior to this study, the optical levitation of solid micron scale particles has proved difficult to achieve over timescales relevant to the above applications. In this work, a new vertically configured counter propagating dual beam optical trap was optimized to levitate a range of solid particles in air. Silica (SiO2), α-alumina (Al2O3), titania (TiO2) and polystyrene were stably trapped with a high trapping efficiency (Q = 0.42). The longest stable trapping experiment was conducted continuously for 24 hours, and there are no obvious constraints on trapping time beyond this period. Therefore, the methodology described in this paper should be of major benefit to various research communities. The strength of the new technique is demonstrated by the simultaneous levitation and spectroscopic interrogation of silica particles by Raman spectroscopy. In particular, the adsorption of water upon silica was investigated under controlled relative humidity environments. Furthermore, the collision and coagulation behaviour of silica particles with microdroplets of sulphuric acid was followed using both optical imaging and Raman spectroscopy.
RESUMO
Silica (SiO2) is an important mineral present in atmospheric mineral dust particles, and the heterogeneous reaction of N2O5 on atmospheric aerosol is one of the major pathways to remove nitrogen oxides from the atmosphere. The heterogeneous reaction of N2O5 with SiO2 has only been investigated by two studies previously, and the reported uptake coefficients differ by a factor of >10. In this work two complementary laboratory techniques were used to study the heterogeneous reaction of SiO2 particles with N2O5 at room temperature and at different relative humidities (RHs). The uptake coefficients of N2O5, γ(N2O5), were determined to be (7.2 ± 0.6) × 10(-3) (1σ) at 7% RH and (5.3 ± 0.8) × 10(-3) (1σ) at 40% RH for SiO2 particles, using the aerosol flow tube technique. We show that γ(N2O5) determined in this work can be reconciled with the two previous studies by accounting for the difference in geometric and BET derived aerosol surface areas. To probe the particle phase chemistry, individual micrometer sized SiO2 particles were optically levitated and exposed to a continuous flow of N2O5 at different RHs, and the composition of levitated particles was monitored online using Raman spectroscopy. This study represents the first investigation into the heterogeneous reactions of levitated individual SiO2 particles as a surrogate for mineral dust. Relative humidity was found to play a critical role: while no significant change of particle composition was observed by Raman spectroscopy during exposure to N2O5 at RH of <2%, increasing the RH led to the formation of nitrate species on the particle surface which could be completely removed after decreasing the RH back to <2%. This can be explained by the partitioning of HNO3 between the gas and adsorbed phases. The atmospheric implications of this work are discussed.