Ionization of Nitric Acid on Ice

Water accommodation on ice and organic surfaces: insights from environmental molecular beam experiments

Water uptake on aerosol and cloud particles in the atmosphere modifies their chemistry and microphysics with important implications for climate on Earth. Here, we apply an environmental molecular beam (EMB) method to characterize water accommodation on ice and organic surfaces. The adsorption of surface-active compounds including short-chain alcohols, nitric acid, and acetic acid significantly affects accommodation of D2O on ice. n-Hexanol and n-butanol adlayers reduce water uptake by facilitating rapid desorption and function as inefficient barriers for accommodation as well as desorption of water, while the effect of adsorbed methanol is small. Water accommodation is close to unity on nitric-acid- and acetic-acid-covered ice, and accommodation is significantly more efficient than that on the bare ice surface. Water uptake is inefficient on solid alcohols and acetic acid but strongly enhanced on liquid phases including a quasi-liquid layer on solid n-butanol. The EMB method provides unique information on accommodation and rapid kinetics on volatile surfaces, and these studies suggest that adsorbed organic and acidic compounds need to be taken into account when describing water at environmental interfaces.

Ionization of Nitric Acid on Crystalline Ice: The Role of Defects and Collective Proton Movement

Ionization of nitric acid (HNO3) on a model ice surface is studied using ab initio molecular dynamics at temperatures of 200 and 40 K with a surface slab model that consists of the ideal ice basal plane with locally optimized and annealed defects. Pico- and subpicosecond ionization of nitric acid can be achieved in the defect sites. Key features of the rapid ionization are (a) the efficient solvation of the polyatomic nitrate anion, by stealing hydrogen bonds from the weakened hydrogen bonds at defect sites, (b) formation of contact ion pairs to stable "presolvated" molecular species that are present at the defects,

Proton transfer reactions between nitric acid and acetone, hydroxyacetone, acetaldehyde and benzaldehyde in the solid phase

The heterogeneous and homogeneous reactions of acetone, hydroxyacetone, acetaldehyde and benzaldehyde with solid nitric acid (HNO(3)) films have been studied with Reflection-Absorption Infrared Spectroscopy (RAIRS) under Ultra-High Vacuum (UHV) conditions in the 90-170 K temperature range. In the bulk or at the surface of the films, nitric acid transfers its proton to the carbonyl function of the organic molecules, producing protonated acetone-H(+), hydroxyacetone-H(+), acetaldehyde-H(+) and benzaldehyde-H(+), and nitrate anions NO(3)(-), a reaction not observed when nitric acid is previously hydrated [J. Lasne, C. Laffon and Ph. Parent, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2012, 14, 697]. This provides a molecular-scale description of the carbonyl protonation reaction in an acid medium, the first step of the acid-catalyzed condensation of carbonyl compounds, fuelling the growth of secondary organic aerosols (SOA) in the atmosphere.

Release of Oxygen Atoms and Nitric Oxide Molecules from the Ultraviolet Photodissociation of Nitrate Adsorbed on Water Ice Films at 100 K

Production of O((3)P(J), J = 2, 1, 0) atoms from the 295-320 nm photodissociation of NO(3)- adsorbed on water polycrystalline ice films at 100 K was directly confirmed using the resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization technique. Detection of the O atom signals required an induction period after deposition of HNO3 onto the ice film held at 130 K due to the slow ionization rate of HNO(3) to H+ and NO(3)- with a rate constant of k = (5.3 +/- 0.2) x 10(-3)s(-1). Translational energy distributions of the O atoms were represented by a combination of two Maxwell-Boltzmann energy distributions with translational temperatures of 2000 and 100 K. Direct detection of NO from the secondary photodissociation process was also successful. On the atmospheric implications, the influence of the direct release of the oxygen atoms into the air from NO(3)- adsorbed on the natural snowpack was included in an atmospheric model calculation on the mixing ratios of ozone and nitric oxide at the South Pole, and the results compared favorably with the field data.

Infrared spectroscopy of the solid phases of ammonia

Thin films of solid ammonia (NH(3) and ND(3)) have been characterized using low temperature (25-110 K) Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and the three solid phase (amorphous, metastable, and crystalline) spectra are reported. This work has been motivated by confusion in the literature about the metastable and crystalline phases as a result of an early erroneous report by Staats and Morgan [(J. Chem. Phys. 31, 553 (1959)]. Although the crystalline phase has subsequently been reported correctly, the metastable phase has not been described in the literature in detail. The unique characteristics of the metastable phase, reported here for the first time, include multiple peaks in the nu(2) and nu(3) regions and peak intensities that are dependent on the deposition temperature. This behavior may be the result of (a) preferential molecular orientations in the solid, or (b) exciton splitting due to different crystal shapes in the solid. The amorphous and metastable phases of deuterated ammonia are also reported for the first time.