Abstract. Elemental compositions of organic aerosol (OA) particles provide useful constraints on OA sources, chemical evolution, and effects. The Aerodyne high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) is widely used to measure OA elemental composition. This study evaluates AMS measurements of atomic oxygento-carbon (O : C), hydrogen-to-carbon (H : C), and organic mass-to-organic carbon (OM : OC) ratios, and of carbon oxidation state (OS C ) for a vastly expanded laboratory data set of multifunctional oxidized OA standards. For the expanded standard data set, the method introduced by Aiken et al. (2008), which uses experimentally measured ion intensities at all ions to determine elemental ratios (referred to here as "Aiken-Explicit"), reproduces known O : C and H : C ratio values within 20 % (average absolute value of relative errors) and 12 %, respectively. The more commonly used method, which uses empirically estimated H 2 O + and CO + ion intensities to avoid gas phase air interferences at these ions (referred to here as "Aiken-Ambient"), reproduces O : C and H : C of multifunctional oxidized species within 28 and 14 % of known values. The values from the latter method are systematically biased low, however, with larger biases observed for alcohols and simple diacids. A detailed examination of the H 2 O + , CO + , and CO + 2 fragments in the high-resolution mass spectra of the standard compounds indicates that the Aiken-Ambient method underestimates the CO + and especially H 2 O + produced from many oxidized species. Combined AMS-vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) ionization measurements indicate that these ions are produced by dehydration and decarboxylation on the AMS vaporizer (usually operated at 600 • C). Thermal decomposition is observed to be efficient at vaporizer temperatures down to 200 • C. These results are used together to develop an "Improved-Ambient" elemental analysis method for AMS spectra measured in air. The Improved-Ambient method uses specific ion fragments as markers to correct for molecular functionality-dependent systematic biases and reproduces known O : C (H : C) ratios of individual oxidized standards within 28 % (13 %) of the known molecular values. The error in Improved-Ambient O : C (H : C) values is smaller for theoretical standard mixtures of the oxidized organic standards, which are more representative of the complex mix of species present in ambient Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. M. R. Canagaratna et al.: Elemental ratio measurements of organic compoundsOA. For ambient OA, the Improved-Ambient method produces O : C (H : C) values that are 27 % (11 %) larger than previously published Aiken-Ambient values; a corresponding increase of 9 % is observed for OM : OC values. These results imply that ambient OA has a higher relative oxygen content than previously estimated. The OS C values calculated for ambient OA by the two methods agree well, however (average relative difference of 0.06 OS C units). This indicates that...

and evolution of organic aerosol involves simultaneous changes to both carbon oxidation state 39 and carbon number (n C ).

The competition between the addition of polar, oxygen-containing functional groups (functionalization) and the cleavage of C-C bonds (fragmentation) has a governing influence on the change in volatility of organic species upon atmospheric oxidation, and hence on the loading of tropospheric organic aerosol. However the relative importance of these two channels is generally poorly constrained for oxidized organics. Here we determine fragmentation-functionalization branching ratios for organics spanning a range of oxidation levels, using the heterogeneous oxidation of squalane (C30H62) as a model system. Squalane particles are exposed to high concentrations of OH in a flow reactor, and measurements of particle mass and elemental ratios enable the determination of absolute elemental composition (number of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen atoms) of the oxidized particles. At low OH exposure, the oxygen content of the organics increases, indicating that functionalization dominates, whereas for more oxidized organics the amount of carbon in the particles decreases, indicating the increasing importance of fragmentation processes. Once the organics are moderately oxidized (O/C approximately 0.4), fragmentation completely dominates, and the increase in O/C ratio upon further oxidation is due to the loss of carbon rather than the addition of oxygen. These results suggest that fragmentation reactions may be key steps in the formation and evolution of oxygenated organic aerosol (OOA).

The heterogeneous oxidation of pure erythritol (C(4)H(10)O(4)) and levoglucosan (C(6)H(10)O(5)) particles was studied in order to evaluate the effects of atmospheric aging on the mass and chemical composition of atmospheric organic aerosol. In contrast to what is generally observed for the heterogeneous oxidation of reduced organics, substantial volatilization is observed in both systems. However, the ratio of the decrease in particle mass to the decrease in the concentration of the parent species is about three times higher for erythritol than for levoglucosan, indicating that details of chemical structure (such as carbon number, cyclic moieties, and oxygen-containing functional groups) play a governing role in the importance of volatilization reactions. The kinetics of the reaction indicate that while both compounds react at approximately the same rate, reactions of their oxidation products appear to be slowed substantially. Estimates of volatilities of organic species based on elemental composition measurements suggest that the heterogeneous oxidation of oxygenated organics may be an important loss mechanism of organic aerosol.