The fractal characteristics of atmospheric coated soot: Implication for morphological analysis

In this work, we have numerically investigated the variation of fractal characteristics of soot particles as soot is coated. We found that the ideal fractal law can fit the morphologies of coated soot only when the radius of gyration (Rg) of coated soot is identical to that of the soot core. In that case, the fractal dimension (Df) of coated soot is close to that of the soot core, which can explain why the unchanged fractal dimension was observed by the previous study as soot was evenly coated. As the voids among monomers is commonly filled firstly, the Rg of coated soot obtained from the two-dimensional (2D) method would be close to that of the soot core, so the measured fractal dimension would be close to that of the soot core. Our results also show that the fractal parameters of coated soot at different size scales can be varied, so the ideal fractal law is difficult to fit the structures of unevenly coated soot universally. Besides, we also found that the effective fractal dimension can increase as soot is unevenly coated. The results of the Q-space analysis show that as soot particles are unevenly coated, the power-law exponent of the structure factor (S(q)) versus the scattering wave vector (q) tends to -4 for heavily coated soot. This means that heavily, unevenly coated soot exhibits the characteristics of nearly spherical particles.