Abstract. The impact of aerosols on climate and air quality remains poorly understood due to multiple factors. One of the current limitations is the incomplete understanding of the contribution of oxygenated products, generated from the gas-phase oxidation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), to aerosol formation. Indeed, atmospheric gaseous chemical processes yield thousands of (highly) oxygenated species, spanning a wide range of chemical formulas, functional groups and, consequently, volatilities. While recent mass spectrometric developments have allowed extensive on-line detection of a myriad of oxygenated organic species, playing a central role in atmospheric chemistry, the detailed quantification and characterization of this diverse group of compounds remains extremely challenging. To address this challenge, we evaluated the capability of current state-of-the-art mass spectrometers equipped with different chemical ionization sources to detect the oxidation products formed from α-Pinene ozonolysis under various conditions. Five different mass spectrometers were deployed simultaneously for a chamber study. Two chemical ionization atmospheric pressure interface time-of-flight mass spectrometers (CI-APi-TOF) with nitrate and amine reagent ion chemistries and an iodide chemical ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF-CIMS) were used. Additionally, a proton transfer reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-TOF 8000) and a new “vocus” PTR-TOF were also deployed. In the current study, we compared around 1000 different compounds between each of the five instruments, with the aim of determining which oxygenated VOCs (OVOCs) the different methods were sensitive to and identifying regions where two or more instruments were able to detect species with similar molecular formulae. We utilized a large variability in conditions (including different VOCs, ozone, NOx and OH scavenger concentrations) in our newly constructed atmospheric simulation chamber for a comprehensive correlation analysis between all instruments. This analysis, combined with estimated concentrations for identified molecules in each instrument, yielded both expected and surprising results. As anticipated based on earlier studies, the PTR instruments were the only ones able to measure the precursor VOC, the iodide TOF-CIMS efficiently detected many semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) with three to five oxygen atoms, and the nitrate CI-APi-TOF was mainly sensitive to highly oxygenated organic (O > 5) molecules (HOMs). In addition, the vocus showed good agreement with the iodide TOF-CIMS for the SVOC, including a range of organonitrates. The amine CI-APi-TOF agreed well with the nitrate CI-APi-TOF for HOM dimers. However, the loadings in our experiments caused the amine reagent ion to be considerably depleted, causing nonlinear responses for monomers. This study explores and highlights both benefits and limitations of currently available chemical ionization mass spectrometry instrumentation for characterizing the wide variety of OVOCs in the atmosphere. While specifically shown for the case of α-Pinene ozonolysis, we expect our general findings to also be valid for a wide range of other VOC–oxidant systems. As discussed in this study, no single instrument configuration can be deemed better or worse than the others, as the optimal instrument for a particular study ultimately depends on the specific target of the study.

Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) contributes a significant fraction to aerosol mass and toxicity.Low-volatility organic vapors are critical intermediates connecting the oxidation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to SOA formation. However, the direct measurement of intermediate vapors poses a great challenge, further compounded by the difficulty of linking them to specific precursors from a cocktail of complex emission sources in the vast urbanized areas. Here, we present coordinated measurements of low-volatility oxidation products, termed oxygenated organic molecules (OOMs) in three most urbanized regions in China. With a newly-developed analysis methodology, we are able to assign these OOMs to their likely precursors and ultimately connect SOA formation to various VOCs. At all measurement locations, we find similar OOM

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Abstract. Recent advancements in atmospheric mass spectrometry provide huge amounts of new information but at the same time present considerable challenges for the data analysts. High-resolution (HR) peak identification and separation can be effort- and time-consuming yet still tricky and inaccurate due to the complexity of overlapping peaks, especially at larger mass-to-charge ratios. This study presents a simple and novel method, mass spectral binning combined with positive matrix factorization (binPMF), to address these problems. Different from unit mass resolution (UMR) analysis or HR peak fitting, which represent the routine data analysis approaches for mass spectrometry datasets, binPMF divides the mass spectra into small bins and takes advantage of the positive matrix factorization's (PMF) strength in separating different sources or processes based on different temporal patterns. In this study, we applied the novel approach to both ambient and synthetic datasets to evaluate its performance. It not only succeeded in separating overlapping ions but was found to be sensitive to subtle variations as well. Being fast and reliable, binPMF has no requirement for a priori peak information and can save much time and effort from conventional HR peak fitting, while still utilizing nearly the full potential of HR mass spectra. In addition, we identify several future improvements and applications for binPMF and believe it will become a powerful approach in the data analysis of mass spectra.

Abstract. The impact of aerosols on climate and air quality remains poorly understood due to multiple factors. One of the current limitations is the incomplete understanding of the contribution of oxygenated products, generated from the gas-phase oxidation of volatile organic compounds (VOC), to aerosol formation. Indeed, atmospheric gaseous chemical processes yield thousands of (highly) oxygenated species, spanning a wide range of chemical formulas, functional groups and, consequently, volatilities. While recent mass spectrometric developments have allowed extensive on-line detection of a myriad of oxygenated organic species, playing a central role in atmospheric chemistry, the detailed quantification and characterization of this diverse group of compounds remains extremely challenging. To address this challenge, we evaluated the capability of current state-of-the-art mass spectrometers equipped with different chemical ionization sources to detect the oxidation products formed from α-pinene ozonolysis under various conditions. Five different mass spectrometers were deployed simultaneously for a chamber study. Two chemical ionization atmospheric pressure interface time-of-flight mass spectrometers (CI-APi-TOF) with nitrate and amine reagent ion chemistries and an iodide chemical ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF-CIMS). Additionally, a proton transfer reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-TOF 8000) and a new “Vocus” PTR-TOF were also deployed. In the current study, we compared around 1000 different compounds between each of the five instruments, with the aim to determine which oxygenated VOC (OVOC) the different methods were sensitive to, and identifying regions where two or more instruments were able to detect species with similar molecular formulae. We utilized a large variability in conditions (including different VOC, ozone, NOx and OH scavenger concentrations) in our newly constructed atmospheric simulation chamber for a comprehensive correlation analysis between all instruments. This analysis, combined with estimated concentrations for identified molecules in each instrument, yielded both expected and surprising results. As anticipated based on earlier studies: the PTR instruments were the only ones able to measure the precursor VOC; the iodide TOF-CIMS efficiently detected many semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOC) with 3 to 5 oxygen atoms; and the nitrate CI-APi-TOF was mainly sensitive to highly-oxygenated organic (O > 5) molecules (HOM). In addition, the Vocus showed good agreement with the iodide TOF-CIMS for the SVOC, including also a range of organonitrates. The amine CI-APi-TOF agreed well with the nitrate CI-APi-TOF for HOM dimers. However, the loadings in our experiments caused the amine reagent ion to be considerably depleted, causing non-linear responses for monomers. This study explores and highlights both benefits and limitations of currently available chemical ionization mass spectrometry instrumentation for characterizing the wide variety of OVOC in the atmosphere. While specifically shown for the case of α-pinene ozonolysis, we expect our general findings to be valid also for a wide range of other VOC-oxidant systems. As discussed in this study, no single instrument configuration can be deemed better or worse than the others, as the optimal instrument for a particular study ultimately depends on the specific target of the study.