Infrared analysis of CO ice particles in the aerosol phase

Fourier transform infrared extinction spectra of a variety of CO ice aerosols, generated at low temperatures in a liquid helium cooled collisional-cooling cell, have been analyzed. Different operation modes of the cooling system were used for the generation of spherical and nonspherical CO nanoparticles at temperatures between 5 and 35 K and with diameters between 10 and 1000 nm. In contrast to the predominantly amorphous CO films described in the literature the presented CO particles are ( poly ) crystalline. A Mie inversion iterative scheme is presented and used to infer the optical constants of CO ice for the cases compact particles have been produced. The spectra of nonspherical CO aerosol particles are interpreted by modeling the extinction using the discrete dipole approximation procedure combined with the retrieved optical constants. A global positive matrix factorization scheme allows us to infer the dominant shapes in the observed particle distribution and can be used as a guide for further experiments. Near 25 K a pronounced shape evolution of smaller particles from spherical toward longish structures was observed at low buffer-gas pressure over 400 s. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.