Advances in Aerosol Instrumentation for Atmospheric Science

nderstanding the processes related to particle formation in the atmosphere is crucial in order to quantify more accurately their effect on climate. New particle formation is a global scale phenomenon, through which significant amounts of new particles are introduced in the atmosphere. A main mechanism of new particle formation is ion-induced nucleation, where vapor molecules nucleate on pre-existing atmospheric ions. It follows that in order to understand the mechanism of ion-induced nucleation, research must be focused on the very first steps of formation which normally lay in the sub-2nm size range. The work of this thesis is focused on facilitating the research on new particle formation by advancing the instrumentation state-of-the-art, but also performing experimental work on the dynamics of ion-induced nucleation.