Ions at the air-water interface : an end to a hundred-year-old mystery?

• Autor(a) principal: Levin, Yan
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Outros Autores: Santos, Alexandre Pereira dos, Diehl, Alexandre
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFRGS
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10183/100098
• topic: Física da matéria condensada; Estrutura líqüida; Eletrostática; Eletrólitos; Interface ar-água; Tensão superficial

Availability of highly reactive halogen ions at the surface of aerosols has tremendous implications for the atmospheric chemistry. Yet neither simulations, experiments, nor existing theories are able to provide a fully consistent description of the electrolyte-air interface. In this Letter a new theory is proposed which allows us to explicitly calculate the ionic density profiles, the surface tension, and the electrostatic potential difference across the solution-air interface. Predictions of the theory are compared to experiments and are found to be in excellent agreement. The theory also sheds new light on one of the oldest puzzles of physical chemistry—the Hofmeister effect.