Centre d'études et d'expertise sur les risques, l'environnement, la mobilité et l'aménagement

Abstract. The ice nucleation of bioaerosols (bacteria, pollen, spores, etc.) is a topic of growing interest, since their impact on ice cloud formation and thus on radiative forcing, an important parameter in global climate, is not yet fully understood. Here we show that pollen of different species strongly differ in their ice nucleation behaviour. The average freezing temperatures in laboratory experiments range from 240 to 255 K. As the most efficient nuclei (silver birch, Scots pine and common juniper pollen) have a distribution area up to the Northern timberline, their ice nucleation activity might be a cryoprotective mechanism. Far more intriguingly, it has turned out that water, which has been in contact with pollen and then been separated from the bodies, nucleates as good as the pollen grains themselves. The ice nuclei have to be easily-suspendable macromolecules located on the pollen. Once extracted, they can be distributed further through the atmosphere than the heavy pollen grains and so presumably augment the impact of pollen on ice cloud formation even in the upper troposphere. Our experiments lead to the conclusion that pollen ice nuclei, in contrast to bacterial and fungal ice nucleating proteins, are non-proteinaceous compounds.

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FeP y (y = 1, 2, 4) anodes all react with lithium through a conversion reaction FeP y + 3yLi → yLi3P + Fe0 in their first discharge, leading to nanocomposite discharged electrodes described by nanosized Fe0 particles embedded in yLi3P matrixes. From electrochemical and complementary in situ X-ray diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy studies, we deduce that the conversion reaction occurring during the first discharge is followed by two successive insertion and conversion processes in further cycles for the FeP electrode. The insertion process is highly reversible, leading to a capacity retention of 300 mA h g-1 and 1900 mA h cm-3 after 100 cycles, and corresponds to the formation of an intermediate tetragonal LiFeP phase as deduced from first-principles T = 0 K phase diagram calculations and preliminary Mössbauer analyses. We expect the kinetics of this reaction to be strongly limited by the increase in y, thus leading to an increasing capacity fading when increasing the y P/Fe ratio.

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