Secondary organic aerosols (SOA), which are produced by the transformations of volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere, play a central role in air quality, public health, visibility and climate, but their formation and aging remain poorly characterized. This study evidences a new mechanism for SOA formation based on photosensitized particulate-phase chemistry. Experiments were performed with a horizontal aerosol flow reactor where the diameter growth of the particles was determined as a function of various parameters. In the absence of gas-phase oxidant, experiments in which ammonium sulfate seeds containing glyoxal were exposed to gas-phase limonene and UV light exhibited a photo-induced SOA growth. Further experiments showed that this growth was due to traces of imidazole-2-carboxaldehyde (IC) in the seeds, a condensation product of glyoxal acting as an efficient photosensitizer. Over a 19 min irradiation time, 50 nm seed particles containing this compound were observed to grow between 3.5 and 30 +/- 3% in the presence of either limonene, isoprene, alpha-pinene, beta-pinene, or toluene in concentrations between 1.8 and 352 ppmv. The other condensation products of glyoxal, imidazole (IM) and 2,2-bi1H-imidazole (BI), also acted as photosensitizer but with much less efficiency under the same conditions. In the atmosphere, glyoxal and potentially other gas precursors would thus produce efficient photosensitizers in aerosol and autophotocatalyze SOA growth.

In recent years, it has been proposed that gas phase glyoxal could significantly contribute to ambient organic aerosol (OA) mass through multiphase chemistry. Of particular interest is the reaction between glyoxal and ammonium cations producing light-absorbing compounds such as imidazole derivatives. It was recently shown that imidazole-2-carboxaldehyde (IC) can act as a photosensitizer, initiating aerosol growth in the presence of gaseous volatile organic compounds. Given the potential importance of this new photosensitized growth pathway for ambient OA, the related reaction mechanism was investigated at a molecular level. Bulk and flow tube experiments were performed to identify major products of the reaction of limonene with the triplet state of IC by direct (±)ESI-HRMS and UPLC/(±)HESI-HRMS analysis. Detection of recombination products of IC with limonene or with itself, in bulk and flow tube experiments, showed that IC is able to initiate a radical chemistry in the aerosol phase under realistic irradiation conditions. Furthermore, highly oxygenated limonene reaction products were detected, clearly explaining the observed OA growth. The chemistry of peroxy radicals derived from limonene upon addition of oxygen explains the formation of such low-volatile compounds without any traditional gas phase oxidant.