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Abstract

Accurate determination of acidity (pH) and ion activities in aqueous droplets is a major experimental and theoretical challenge for understanding and simulating atmospheric multiphase chemistry. Here, we develop a ratiometric Raman spectroscopy method to measure the equilibrium concentration of sulfate (SO42–) and bisulfate (HSO4–) in single microdroplets levitated by aerosol optical tweezers. This approach enables determination of ion activities and pH in aqueous sodium bisulfate droplets under highly supersaturated conditions. The experimental results were compared against aerosol thermodynamic model calculations in terms of simulating aerosol ion concentrations, ion activity coefficients, and pH. We found that the Extended Aerosol Inorganics Model (E-AIM) can well reproduce the experimental results. The alternative model ISORROPIA, however, exhibits substantial deviations in SO42– and HSO4– concentrations and up to a full unit of aerosol pH under acidic conditions, mainly due to discrepancies in simulating ion activity coefficients of SO42––HSO4– equilibrium. Globally, this may cause an average deviation of ISORROPIA from E-AIM by 25 and 65% in predicting SO42– and HSO4– concentrations, respectively. Our results show that it is important to determine aerosol pH and ion activities in the investigation of sulfate formation and related aqueous phase chemistry.