The classical homogeneous nucleation theory was employed to calculate the efflorescence relative humidity (ERH) of airborne ammonium sulfate particles with a wide size range (8 nm to 17 microm) at room temperature. The theoretical predictions are in good agreement with the experimentally measured values. When the ammonium sulfate particle is decreased in size, the ERH first decreases, reaches a minimum around 30% for particle diameter equal to about 30 nm, and then increases. It is for the first time that the Kelvin effect is theoretically verified to substantially affect the ERH of ammonium sulfate particles smaller than 30 nm, while the aerosol size is the dominant factor affecting the efflorescent behavior of ammonium sulfate particles larger than 50 nm.

Low‐molecular weight oligo(carbonate‐ether) diols are important raw materials for polyurethane formation, which with tunable carbonate unit content (CU) may endow new thermal and mechanical performances to polyurethane. Herein, facile synthesis of oligo(carbonate‐ether) diols with number average molecular weight (Mn) below 2000 g mol−1 and CU tunable between 40% and 75% are realized in high activity by immortal copolymerization of CO2/propylene oxide (PO) using zinc‐cobalt double metal cyanide complex (Zn‐Co‐DMCC) in the presence of sebacic acid (SA). Mn of the oligomer is in good linear relationship to the mole ratio of PO and SA (PO/SA) and hence can be precisely controlled by adjusting PO/SA. Besides, the molecular weight distribution is quite narrow due to the rapid reversible chain transfer in the immortal copolymerization. High pressure and low temperature are favorable for raising CU. In all the reactions, the weight fraction of propylene carbonate (WPC) can even be controlled as low as 2.0 wt %, and the catalytic activity of Zn‐Co‐DMCC is above 1.0 kgg−1 cat. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2012

We study the efflorescence relative humidity (ERH) of particles composed of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate. Both experimental and theoretical investigations are conducted to explore the effects of particle size and mixing ratios between two inorganic materials on ERH. A previously developed theoretical model (Gao et al. J. Phys. Chem. A 2006, 110, 7602; ref 1) is applied as the framework to build a formulation assuming that one salt nucleates much faster than the other, and the critical nuclei formation of the former controls the rate of efflorescence. The predicted ERHs agree favorably with the experimental data, except for particles containing Na2SO4 in a mole fraction of around 0.25. At this composition, our model underestimates the ERH, indicating certain factors involved in the efflorescent processes that are overlooked in our formulation. Relative to particles larger than 40 nm, the Kelvin effect more significantly affects particles smaller than this size.