Stability and Vapor Pressure of Aqueous Aggregates and Aerosols Containing a Monovalent Ion.

The incidence of charged particles on the nucleation and the stability of aqueous aggregates and aerosols was reported more than a century ago. Many studies have been conducted ever since to characterize the stability, structure, and nucleation barrier of ion-water droplets. Most of these studies have focused on the free-energy surface as a function of cluster size, with an emphasis on the role of ionic charge and radius. This knowledge is fundamental to go beyond the rudimentary ion-induced classical nucleation theory. In the present article, we address this problem from a different perspective, by computing the vapor pressures of (HO)Li and (HO)Cl aggregates using molecular simulations. Our calculations shed light on the structure, the critical size, the range of stability, and the role of ion-water interactions in aqueous clusters. Moreover, they allow one to assess the accuracy of the classical thermodynamic model, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses.