Carbon oxidation state as a metric for describing the chemistry of atmospheric organic aerosol
Carbon oxidation state as a metric for describing the chemistry of atmospheric organic aerosol
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DOI：
10.1038/nchem.948
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发表时间：
2011-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
21.8
通讯作者：
Worsnop, Douglas R.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kroll, Jesse H.;Donahue, Neil M.;Worsnop, Douglas R.
详细了解环境中有机物种的来源、转化和命运至关重要，因为它们在人类健康、生物地球化学循环和地球气候中发挥着核心作用。然而，由于环境中有机物混合物的巨大化学复杂性，这种理解受到了阻碍；例如，大气有机气溶胶至少由数千种单独的化合物组成，所有这些化合物都可能在其大气寿命内发生化学演化。在这里，我们展示了用平均碳氧化态来描述有机气溶胶(和其他复杂的有机混合物)的实用性，这个量总是随着氧化而增加，并且很容易用最先进的分析技术来测量。使用几种这样的技术对平均碳氧化态的现场和实验室测量限制了有机物的化学性质，并表明有机气溶胶的形成和演化涉及碳氧化态和碳数的同时变化。
A detailed understanding of the sources, transformations and fates of organic species in the environment is crucial because of the central roles that they play in human health, biogeochemical cycles and the Earth's climate. However, such an understanding is hindered by the immense chemical complexity of environmental mixtures of organics; for example, atmospheric organic aerosol consists of at least thousands of individual compounds, all of which likely evolve chemically over their atmospheric lifetimes. Here, we demonstrate the utility of describing organic aerosol (and other complex organic mixtures) in terms of average carbon oxidation state, a quantity that always increases with oxidation, and is readily measured using state-of-the-art analytical techniques. Field and laboratory measurements of the average carbon oxidation state, using several such techniques, constrain the chemical properties of the organics and demonstrate that the formation and evolution of organic aerosol involves simultaneous changes to both carbon oxidation state and carbon number.