Chilling out: a cool aqueous environment promotes the formation of gas-surface complexes

SO(2), an important atmospheric pollutant, has been implicated in environmental phenomena such as acid rain, climate change, and cloud formation. In addition, SO(2) is fundamentally interesting because it forms spectroscopically identifiable complexes with water at aqueous surfaces. Vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy (VSFS) is used here to further investigate the mechanism by which SO(2) adsorbs to water at tropospherically relevant temperatures (0-23 °C). The spectral results lead to two important conclusions. SO(2) surface affinity is enhanced at colder temperatures, with nearly all of the topmost water molecules showing evidence of binding to SO(2) at 0 °C as compared to a much lower fraction at room temperature. This surface adsorption results in significant changes in water orientation at the surface, but is reversible at the temperatures examined here. Second, the SO(2) complex formation at aqueous surfaces is independent of aqueous solution acidity. One challenge in previous uptake studies was the ability to distinguish between the effects of surface adsorption as compared to bulk accommodation. The surface and vibrational specificity of these studies make this distinction possible, allowing a selective study of how the aqueous properties temperature and pH influence SO(2) surface affinity.