Glycine in aerosol water droplets: a critical assessment of Köhler theory by predicting surface tension from molecular dynamics simulations

Aerosol particles in the atmosphere are important participants in the formation of cloud droplets and have significant impact on cloud albedo and global climate. According to the Köhler theory which describes the nucleation and the equilibrium growth of cloud droplets, the surface tension of an aero...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Atmospheric chemistry and physics 2011-01, Vol.11 (2), p.519-527
Main Authors: Li, X., Hede, T., Tu, Y., Leck, C., Ågren, H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atmosfärs- och hydrosfärsvetenskap
atmosfärvetenskap och oceanografi
Atmosphere and hydrosphere sciences
Atmospheric Sciences and Oceanography
Chemistry
Earth sciences
Geovetenskap
Kemi
NATURAL SCIENCES
NATURVETENSKAP
Teoretisk kemi
Theoretical chemistry
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Summary:Aerosol particles in the atmosphere are important participants in the formation of cloud droplets and have significant impact on cloud albedo and global climate. According to the Köhler theory which describes the nucleation and the equilibrium growth of cloud droplets, the surface tension of an aerosol droplet is one of the most important factors that determine the critical supersaturation of droplet activation. In this paper, with specific interest to remote marine aerosol, we predict the surface tension of aerosol droplets by performing molecular dynamics simulations on two model systems, the pure water droplets and glycine in water droplets. The curvature dependence of the surface tension is interpolated by a quadratic polynomial over the nano-sized droplets and the limiting case of a planar interface, so that the so-called Aitken mode particles which are critical for droplet formation could be covered and the Köhler equation could be improved by incorporating surface tension corrections.
ISSN:1680-7324
1680-7316
1680-7324
DOI:10.5194/acp-11-519-2011