Characterization of Organic Nitrogen in the Atmosphere Using High Resolution Aerosol Mass Spectrometry

Despite extensive efforts on characterizing organic nitrogen (ON) compounds in atmospheric aerosols and aqueous droplets, knowledge of ON chemistry is still limited, mainly due to its chemical complexity and lack of highly time-resolved measurements. This work is aimed at optimizing the method of using Aerodyne high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (HR-AMS) to characterize ON compounds in atmospheric aerosols. Seventy-five pure nitrogen-containing organic compounds covering a variety of functional groups were analyzed with the HR-AMS. Our results show that ON compounds commonly produce NHx+, NOx+, which are usually attributed to inorganic N species such as ammonium and nitrate, and CH2N+ at m/z = 28, which is rarely quantified in ambient aerosol due to large interference from N2+ in the air signal. As a result, using the nitrogen-to-carbon (N/C) calibration factor proposed by Aiken et al. (2008) on average leads to ~ 20% underestimation of N/C in ambient organic aerosol. A new calibration factor of 0.79 is proposed for determining the average N/C in organics. The relative ionization efficiencies (RIEs) of different ON species, on average, are found to be consistent with the default RIE value (1.4) for the total organics. The AMS mass spectral features of various types of ON species (amines, amides, amino acids, etc.) are examined and used for characterizing ON composition in ambient aerosols. Our results indicate that submicron organic aerosol measured during wintertime in Fresno, CA contains significant amounts of amino-compounds whereas more diversified ON species, including N-containing aromatic heterocycle (e.g., imidazoles), are observed in fog waters collected simultaneously. Our findings have important implications for understanding atmospheric ON behaviors via the widespread HR-AMS measurements of ambient aerosols and droplets.