The Significant Role of New Particle Composition and Morphology on the HNO3-Driven Growth of Particles down to Sub-10 nm

New particle formation and growth greatly influence air quality and the global climate. Recent CERN Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets (CLOUD) chamber experiments proposed that in cold urban atmospheres with highly supersaturated HNO3 and NH3, newly formed sub-10 nm nanoparticles can grow rapidly (up to 1000 nm h–1). Here, we present direct observational evidence that in winter Beijing with persistent highly supersaturated HNO3 and NH3, nitrate contributed less than ∼14% of the 8–40 nm nanoparticle composition, and overall growth rates were only ∼0.8–5 nm h–1. To explain the observed growth rates and particulate nitrate fraction, the effective mass accommodation coefficient of HNO3 (αHNO3) on the nanoparticles in urban Beijing needs to be 2–4 orders of magnitude lower than those in the CLOUD chamber. We propose that the inefficient uptake of HNO3 on nanoparticles is mainly due to the much higher particulate organic fraction and lower relative humidity in urban Beijing. To quantitatively reproduce the observed growth, we show that an inhomogeneous "inorganic core–organic shell" nanoparticle morphology might exist for nanoparticles in Beijing. This study emphasized that growth for nanoparticles down to sub-10 nm was largely influenced by their composition, which was previously ignored and should be considered in future studies on nanoparticle growth.