Bromine and heavy halide chemistry at the air/water and air/ice interfaces: a computational approach

The air-water and air-ice interfaces are critically important surfaces, with respect to the physical and chemical properties of the Earth's atmosphere. In particular chloride, bromide and iodide ions are strongly involved in the reactions occurring at aerosol surfaces that are hydrated and at the air-ice interface in the polar boundary layer. Unfortunately, experimental access to these interfaces are quite problematic and the computational approach, based on molecular dynamic simulations and quantum mechanic calculations, is an interesting alternative approach. In this work, molecular dynamic (MD) simulations are used to study the halide enhancements at the air-water interface in the case of a dilute mixture of iodide, bromide and chloride ions. The MD results show how the air- water halide enhancement is different in the case of mixtures from the case of binary solutions (i.e. anions plus counter-positive ions) and how the presence of these halides at the interfaces depends from their relative concentrations in solution. In detail, heavy halides are strongly enhanced at the interfaces even if they are minor constituents in the bulk. Furthermore the enhancement of the larger halide ions, like bromide, at the surface is greater if lighter halides, like chloride, are in greater excess in the bulk. The applications of this last result on some real system, like sea-water, and the importance of bromide ions in the polar chemistry of ozone depletion events suggest a combined approach, MD and quantum mechanism (QM) calculation, to investigate the ozonation reaction of bromide (Br-+O3 → BrO-+O2 ) in the ice-QLL and in bulk water. The study of the reaction constants suggests how the different environments can affect the kinetics of such reaction. These results can help to understand the complex chemistry occurring at the air-water interface of hydrated aerosol and at the air-ice interface in the polar boundary layer.