Research Topics

Organic aerosols (OA) are a challenge for reliable predictions of future climate development, because major emissions arise from vegetation thus are coupled to climate and climate warming. The section "Aerosols" continuous the investigation of secondary aerosol formation by oxidation of real plant emissions (Kiendler-Scharr et al. Nature, 2009, Mentel et al., ACP, 2009, 2013, Hohaus et al., AMT 2016 ).

We elucidate OA formation with foci on non-classical emissions (stress induced VOC emissions), non-classical pathways (ultrafast formation of highly oxidized molecules by autoxidation) and oxidative aerosol ageing (isotopic clock). Key methods are based on mass spectrometry in gas phase, particulate phase and for partitioning, because of the volatility of organic aerosol components. Stable isotopy provides complementary information about aerosol forming reactions and degradation of organic markers in the particulate phase.

Besides classical concentration and size distribution measurements of particles and their cloud droplet activation, we are specializing in mass spectrometric methods, which span from the measurements in gas phase (API-TOF-CIMS) and particulate phase (HR-TOF-AMS), over partitioning (TAG-AMS, ACM-PTR-MS) to the measurements of natural stable isotopes (2D-GC-IR-MS).