Impact of NOx on secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation from α-pinene and β-pinene photooxidation: the role of highly oxygenated organic nitrates

The formation of organic nitrates (ONs) in the gas phase and their impact on mass formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) was investigated in a laboratory study for alpha-pinene and beta-pinene photooxidation. Focus was the elucidation of those mechanisms that cause the often observed suppression of SOA mass formation by NOx, and therein the role of highly oxygenated multifunctional molecules (HOMs). We observed that with increasing NOx concentration (a) the portion of HOM organic nitrates (HOM-ONs) increased, (b) the fraction of accretion products (HOM-ACCs) decreased, and (c) HOM-ACCs contained on average smaller carbon numbers. Specifically, we investigated HOM organic nitrates (HOM-ONs), arising from the termination reactions of HOM peroxy radicals with NOx, and HOM permutation products (HOM-PPs), such as ketones, alcohols, or hydroperoxides, formed by other termination reactions. Effective uptake coefficients gamma(eff) of HOMs on particles were determined. HOMs with more than six O atoms efficiently condensed on particles (gamma(eff) > 0.5 on average), and for HOMs containing more than eight O atoms, every collision led to loss. There was no systematic difference in gamma(eff ) for HOM-ONs and HOM-PPs arising from the same HOM peroxy radicals. This similarity is attributed to the multifunctional character of the HOMs: as functional groups in HOMs arising from the same precursor HOM peroxy radical are identical, vapor pressures should not strongly depend on the character of the final termination group. As a consequence, the suppressing effect of NOx on SOA formation cannot be simply explained by replacement of terminal functional groups by organic nitrate groups. According to their gamma(eff )all HOM-ONs with more than six O atoms will contribute to organic bound nitrate (OrgNO(3)) in the particulate phase. However, the fraction of OrgNO(3) stored in condensable HOMs with molecular masses > 230 Da appeared to be substantially higher than the fraction of particulate OrgNO(3) observed by aerosol mass spectrometry. This result suggests losses of OrgNO(3) for organic nitrates in particles, probably due to hydrolysis of OrgNO(3) that releases HNO3 into the gas phase but leaves behind the organic rest in the particulate phase. However, the loss of HNO3 alone could not explain the observed suppressing effect of NOx on particle mass formation from alpha-pinene and beta-pinene. Instead we can attribute most of the reduction in SOA mass yields with increasing NOx to the significant suppression of gas phase HOM-ACCs, which have high molecular mass and are potentially important for SOA mass formation at low-NOx conditions.