Glass formation processes in mixed inorganic/organic aerosol particles

Recent experiments suggest that organic aerosol particles may transform into a glassy state at room temperature under dry conditions. Information on glass forming processes in mixed inorganic/organic aerosol particles is sparse, however, because inorganic crystal nucleation is usually very likely in such mixtures. Here we investigate the glass transition temperatures Tg of various organics (trehalose, sucrose, citric acid, sorbitol, and glycerol as well as 3-MBTCA) in binary mixtures with either NaNO3 or NH4HSO4 at different mass fractions. The glassy samples were prepared with the MARBLES technique by atomizing dilute aqueous solutions into aerosol particles and subsequent diffusion drying. The resulting aerosol particles were collected and their phase behavior was investigated using differential scanning calorimetry. At small and intermediate inorganic mass fractions salt crystallization did not occur. Instead, the single-phase mixtures remained in an amorphous state upon drying such that determination of their Tg was possible. From these measurements the Tg value of pure NaNO3 and pure NH4HSO4 could be inferred through extrapolation, resulting in values of Tg(NaNO3) ≈ 290 K and Tg(NH4HSO4) ≈ 220 K. Upon drying of NH4HSO4/3-MBTCA mixtures, phase-separated samples formed in which the inorganic-rich and organic-rich phases each show an independent glass transition. Our measurements provide a route toward establishing Tg values of inorganic salts that usually crystallize readily, and they may explain the reported contradicting observations of NaNO3 aerosol particles to either crystallize or remain amorphous upon drying at room temperature.