The Environmental Control of Individual Aqueous Particles in a Cubic Electrodynamic Levitation System

ABSTRACT The experimental investigation of aerosol particles often requires special apparatus to ensure that the walls of the system interfere minimally with the measurements. Electrodynamic levitation offers an attractive approach because the particle, when suitably charged, is held away from the system walls by time-dependent electric fields. A new electrodynamic levitation system has been developed expressly for investigating aqueous particles in controlled gaseous environments. A cubic cell was used in conjunction with the carefully controlled introduction of gas into the cell to form a wall-less flow reactor that is ideal for thermodynamic and kinetic studies involving reactive reagents. Unlike most previous cell configurations, the cubic geometry permits three-axis position control of the particle and an ability to measure the gravitational and drag forces simultaneously and independently when the gas flow is horizontally aligned. Preliminary results at room temperature of the mass gained by salt an...