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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter (O) July 3, 2015

Can we Observe Gas Phase Nucleation at the Molecular Level?

  • Jorge J. Ferreiro , Thomas E. Gartmann , Bernhard Schläppi and Ruth Signorell EMAIL logo

Abstract

We propose and discuss an experiment for the study of neutral gas phase nucleation on a molecular level using propane as the condensable gas. The experiment combines a uniform Laval expansion with soft mass spectrometric detection. The uniform Laval expansion allows nucleation experiments under well-defined conditions while the mass spectrometric detection provides molecular-level information on the molecular aggregates formed. It is discussed how one could observe the onset of nucleation and retrieve the size of the critical nucleus from the mass spectra.

Acknowledgement

We are very grateful to David Stapfer and Markus Steger from the LPC shops for their assistance in developing the experimental setup. Financial support was provided by the ETH Zürich and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF projects no. 200021_146368 and 200020_159205).

Received: 2015-3-25
Accepted: 2015-6-18
Published Online: 2015-7-3
Published in Print: 2015-10-28

©2015 Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

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