Gas phase nucleation has been identified as a significant source of aerosol particles in the atmosphere. However, it is difficult to study the key aspects of this process due to the complexity of the chemical systems and to technical limitations. The crucial step, the nucleation step, involves molecular aggregates of sizes below a few nanometers, which are not only difficult to generate in a controlled way, but also to detect non-destructively.This contribution suggests an experimental laboratory setup to study gas phase nucleation on a fundamental level. We use Laval nozzles to initiate condensation by controlling the gas pressure and temperature in the supersonic Laval expansion. Clusters produced in these expansions are subsequently detected using mass spectrometric methods, which provide information on the size and the chemical composition of aggregates involved in the nucleation step.

Development of an experimental setup for the direct observation of gas phase nucleation

248th National Meeting (2014)

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