Abstract
Abstract. Heterogeneous nucleation of water vapour on insoluble nuclei is a phenomenon that can induce atmospheric water and ice cloud formation. However, modelling of the phenomenon is hampered by the fact that the predictive capability of the classical heterogeneous nucleation theory is rather poor. A reliable theoretical description of the influence of different types of water-insoluble nuclei in triggering the water condensation or ice deposition would help to decrease uncertainty in large-scale model simulations. In this paper we extend a recently formulated adsorption theory of heterogeneous nucleation to be applicable to highly curved surfaces, and test the theory against laboratory data for water vapour nucleation on silica, titanium dioxide and silver oxide nanoparticles. We show that unlike the classical heterogeneous nucleation theory, the new theory is able to quantitatively predict the experimental results.
Highlights
Heterogeneous nucleation of vapours on solid and liquid surfaces is a phenomenon encountered in many natural and industrial systems
In this paper we extend a recently formulated adsorption theory of heterogeneous nucleation to be applicable to highly curved surfaces, and test the theory against laboratory data for water vapour nucleation on silica, titanium dioxide and silver oxide nanoparticles
Cirrus cloud formation by ice deposited from the vapour phase on mineral or other water insoluble aerosols is a climatically important phenomenon initiated by heterogeneous nucleation
Summary
Heterogeneous nucleation of vapours on solid and liquid surfaces is a phenomenon encountered in many natural and industrial systems. Cirrus cloud formation by ice deposited from the vapour phase on mineral or other water insoluble aerosols is a climatically important phenomenon initiated by heterogeneous nucleation. The classical heterogeneous nucleation theory (CHNT) developed by Fletcher (1958) and its variants that include effects from line tension (Lazaridis, 1993) and transport of adsorbed molecules to the nucleating clusters via surface diffusion (Lee et al, 1998) have been the only available tools for trying to predict the onset of heterogeneous nucleation at given vapour supersaturation and temperature. The purpose of this paper is to show that a recently developed adsorption theory of heterogeneous nucleation (Laaksonen, 2015) modified to account for highly curved substrates is able to quantitatively predict the nucleation of water vapour on different types of nanoparticles
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