Contribution of Charge-Transfer Complexes to Absorptivity of Primary Brown Carbon Aerosol

Abstract

Light-absorbing organic aerosol, or brown carbon (BrC), has significant but poorly constrained effects on climate. A large fraction of the absorptivity of ambient BrC is unassigned, and organic charge-transfer (CT) complexes have the potential to contribute to this fraction. Here, the contributions of CT complexes to the absorptivity of laboratory-generated BrC and ambient aerosol material influenced by biomass burning have been investigated, using a wide range of chemical, spectroscopic, and physical analyses. Chemical functionalization experiments are inconclusive about the role of CT complexes, whereas fluorescence spectra exhibit distinct spectral features indicative of individual chromophores. Determinations of the concentration and temperature dependences of absorbance are more conclusive. In particular, for laboratory-generated BrC extracted in either water or methanol, absorbance scaled linearly with orders-of-magnitude changes in concentration, indicating that intermolecular complexes do not contribute to the absorptivity. Furthermore, whereas the absorbance of BrC extracts in dimethyl sulfoxide exhibited a slight temperature dependence, consistent with a 15% contribution from intramolecular CT complexes at 15 °C, the complete temperature independence of absorbance of water-soluble extracts from surrogate and ambient BrC indicates a negligible role for CT complexes. Overall, our results find little evidence for CT complexes in the primary BrC studied, suggesting that they do not contribute significantly to the missing absorptivity of ambient BrC