Mass Spectrometry Analysis in Atmospheric Chemistry.
In the Earth's atmosphere, numerous gas phase species and airborne particles form a complex mixture called atmospheric aerosol. A variety of natural and anthropogenic primary emission sources along with chemical and photochemical transformations of the emitted compounds in the atmosphere contribute to a large diversity of aerosols, which often contain hundreds of individual components existing in different phases in a dynamic gas particle exchange.1 3 Common examples of atmospheric aerosols include sea salt spray (SSA) biomass burning organic aerosol (BBOA) mineral dust, soot, biological aerosol, and forest haze. Organic aerosol (OA) is commonly categorized either as a primary organic aerosol (POA) or secondary organic aerosol (SOA) depending on how it is produced. However, this distinction is quickly erased by the chemical and physical aging processes in the atmosphere. In the aerosol system, concentrations of individual compounds both in the gas and condensed phases can differ by orders of magnitude.
Analytical chemistry