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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-68</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>In Situ Real-Time Determination of SO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; Photochemical Oxidation in Nanoscale Sea Salt Aerosols based on Dark-Field Microscopy</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Xiong</surname>
<given-names>Xijie</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Xie</surname>
<given-names>Zhibo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wei</surname>
<given-names>XiuLi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhang</surname>
<given-names>Douguo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Liu</surname>
<given-names>Jianguo</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7051-4272</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Gui</surname>
<given-names>Huaqiao</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Key Laboratory of Environmental Optics and Technology, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Environment, Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei 231299, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Photonics, Department of Optics and Optical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>27</day>
<month>01</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>20</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Xijie Xiong et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-68/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-68/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-68/egusphere-2026-68.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-68/egusphere-2026-68.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Heterogeneous reaction processes of aerosols play an important role in air quality and climate change. However, the lack of in-situ measurements of single-nanoparticle reactions results in large uncertainties in modeling the nanoparticle reaction kinetics.&amp;nbsp;The study introduces a method to quantify reaction rates of single-nanoparticles using hygroscopic growth factors (GFs) and the Zdanovskii-Stokes-Robinson (ZSR) rule. Planar waveguide dark-field microscopy was employed to monitor sodium chloride (NaCl) aerosol GFs under ultraviolet (UV) irradiation and SO&lt;sub&gt;2 &lt;/sub&gt;exposure in real time. The results revealed a first-order reaction rate constant of 0.6523 h⁻&amp;sup1;&amp;nbsp;for 100 nm NaCl aerosols. Moreover, the reaction rate constant exhibits a non-monotonic size dependence on particle diameter-increasing in the 50&amp;ndash;200 nm range and decreasing for particle sizes larger than 200 nm. This reflects a competitive interplay between the surface curvature effect at small particle sizes and specific surface area effect at larger sizes, which is further validated by a combined analysis based on transition state theory and the double-film mass transfer approach. Subsequently, sodium octyl sulfate (SOS) was introduced to form binary NaCl-based nanoaerosols, where the organic coating content was systematically varied under constant surface curvature to modulate the specific surface area. An increase in organic volume fraction reduces the effective specific surface area and suppresses heterogeneous reaction rates, accompanied by a pronounced nonlinear transition from partial to complete coating. This further confirms the experimentally observed size-dependent nonlinearity in reaction rates and offers new insights into nanoscale sulfate formation, improving atmospheric chemical models and pollution-climate assessments.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="20"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42305143</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>Anhui Provincial Department of Science and Technology</funding-source>
<award-id>2308085QD128</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs3">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42375214</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
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