Follow the Carbon: Isotopic Labeling Studies of Early Earth Aerosol.

Despite the faint young Sun, early Earth might have been kept warm by an atmosphere containing the greenhouse gases CH4 and CO2 in mixing ratios higher than those found on Earth today. Laboratory and modeling studies suggest that an atmosphere containing these trace gases could lead to the formation of organic aerosol haze due to UV photochemistry. Chemical mechanisms proposed to explain haze formation rely on CH4 as the source of carbon and treat CO2 as a source of oxygen only, but this has not previously been verified experimentally. In the present work, we use isotopically labeled precursor gases and unit-mass resolution (UMR) and high-resolution (HR) aerosol mass spectrometry to examine the sources of carbon and oxygen to photochemical aerosol formed in a CH4/CO2/N2 atmosphere. UMR results suggest that CH4 contributes 70-100% of carbon in the aerosol, while HR results constrain the value from 94% to 100%. We also confirm that CO2 contributes approximately 10% of the total mass to the aerosol as oxygen. These results have implications for the geochemical interpretations of inclusions found in Archean rocks on Earth and for the astrobiological potential of other planetary atmospheres. Key Words: Atmosphere-Early Earth-Planetary atmospheres-Carbon dioxide-Methane. Astrobiology 16, 822-830.

Elemental analysis of complex organic aerosol using isotopic labeling and unit-resolution mass spectrometry.

Elemental analysis of unit-mass resolution (UMR) mass spectra is limited by the amount of information available to definitively elucidate the molecular formula of a molecule ionized by electron impact. The problem is compounded when a mixture of organic molecules (such as those found in organic aerosols) is analyzed without the benefit of prior separation. For this reason, quadrupole mass spectrometry is not usually suited to the elemental analysis of organic mixtures. Here, we present a mathematical method for the elemental analysis of UMR mass spectra of a complex organic aerosol through the use of isotopic labeling. Quadrupole aerosol mass spectrometry was used to obtain UMR data of (13)C-labeled and unlabeled aerosol generated by far ultraviolet (FUV) photochemistry of gas mixtures containing 0.1% of either CH4 or (13)CH4 in N2. In this method, the differences in the positions of ion groups in the resulting spectra are used to estimate the mass fraction of carbon in the aerosol, and estimation of the remaining elements follows. Analysis of the UMR data yields an elemental composition of 63 ± 7% C, 8 ± 1% H, and 29 ± 7% N by mass. Unlabeled aerosols formed under the same conditions are found by high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometry to have an elemental composition of 63 ± 3% C, 8 ± 1% H, 20 ± 4% N, and 9 ± 3% O by mass, in good agreement with the UMR method. This favorable comparison verifies the method, which expands the UMR mass spectrometry toolkit.

Synthesis and characterization of amphiphilic phenylene ethynylene oligomers and their Langmuir-Blodgett films.

We report the synthesis of a series of amphiphilic molecular building blocks that can be self-assembled at the air-water interface to form two- and three-dimensional nanostructures with tunable optoelectronic properties. Compression of these molecular building blocks using the Langmuir-Blodgett method gives rise to monolayer and multilayer thin films with different packing densities and electronic properties that are tunable due to varying pi-pi (hydrophobic) interactions. Depending on the noncovalent interaction between chromophores, we observe a transition toward denser packing with increasing number of phenylene ethynylene repeat units. Additionally, we use quantum-chemical simulations to help determine the excited-state electronic structure, intermolecular interactions, and packing trends. Our results demonstrate that the interplay between dipole-dipole and pi-pi interactions dominates the formation of thin films with various packing densities and determines the associated optical properties.