Jan-Hendrik Peters

AS Atmospheric Sciences

The 2023 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Jan-Hendrik Peters for the poster/PICO entitled:

Insights into Aqueous Glyoxal Chemistry via Glass Transition Measurements (Peters, J.-H.; Dette, H. P.; Koop, T.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Jan-Hendrik Peters is a PhD student in the Atmospheric & Physical Chemistry group led by Thomas Koop at Bielefeld University, Germany. He has been interested in the phase state of atmospherically relevant aerosol particles since his master’s thesis in chemistry. His work is focused on the study of highly viscous and glassy aerosol particles by thermal analysis in lab studies. Atmospheric aerosol particles have been shown to form highly viscous phases. Nevertheless, experimental studies in this area are still scarce and urgently needed, since the phase state can have an impact on the atmospheric chemistry and cloud activation.
In his presentation at EGU23, Jan showed results of a recent study on glass transition temperature measurements of dried aqueous glyoxal solutions. Aqueous glyoxal-containing aerosol particles readily formed highly viscous or even glassy phase states with glass transition temperatures varying between 211 and 350 K, depending upon composition and drying rate. It is shown that after diluting the aqueous glyoxal solutions with water, mimicking water uptake in the atmosphere, the establishment of a new chemical equilibrium requires hours to days, depending on temperature. In a novel approach, the glass transition temperature measurements were used to infer information on the aqueous solution chemistry of organic molecules in slowly equilibrating systems