Time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometry: Measuring gaseous iodine species after selective uptake in lab-generated aerosols

Reactive iodine species play an important role in the marine atmospheric chemistry. Recent studies show that iodine containing compounds (e.g. I2 and ICl) are involved in the tropospheric ozone depletion, the enrichment of iodine in marine aerosols and the formation of new particles in the marine boundary layer (MBL). Various laboratory and field measurements report that molecular iodine (I2) and organoiodine compounds (e.g. CH3I, CH2I2) are the most important precursors for reactive iodine in the MBL[1],[2]. However, the identification and quantification of reactive iodine containing compounds are still analytical challenges. Here, we present a new application of the time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (ToF-AMS) for the quantification of gaseous I2 and ICl in real-time. Time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometry enables the real-time analysis of the particle size, the particle mass and the chemical composition of non-refractory aerosols[3]. The aerosol enters the ToF-AMS through a critical orifice of 100 µm inner diameter. An aerodynamic lens system focuses the particles in a size range of 50-600 nm as a narrow beam into the vacuum system. While most of the air is removed by a skimmer, the particle beam is transmitted into the particle-sizing chamber. After passing the particle-sizing chamber, the non-refractory particles are flash-vaporized on a heated tungsten surface (500-600 °C) and then ionized by electron impact. The generated ions are extracted by an orthogonal extractor into the time-of-flight mass spectrometer, where the time resolve