New particle formation (NPF) contributes to more than half of global aerosol number concentrations, with profound implications for human health and climate change. Observational studies have shown that the frequency of NPF events in urban Beijing during summer exceeds the global average. The prevailing paradigm attributes urban NPF primarily to sulfuric acid-base nucleation involving dimethylamine (DMA). However, recent field measurements in summer urban Beijing have identified several emerging amines emitted from carbon capture processes, including monoethanolamine (MEA), piperazine (PZ), diethanolamine (DEA) and N-methyldiethanolamine (MDEA), in addition to DMA. Here, we systematically evaluate the contributions of sulfuric acid-amine nucleation pathways to urban NPF. We found that emerging amines particularly DEA and PZ, can dominate nucleation pathways under polluted urban conditions, surpassing the contribution of DMA. These findings suggest that the current universal paradigm of urban nucleation should be revisited to explicitly account for the role of emerging amines. Moreover, emerging amine-mediated NPF will become increasingly important in the context of future co-control policies for air pollution and carbon reduction.
@article{arxiv.2605.25795,
title = {Emerging Amines reshape the paradigm of urban atmospheric particle formation},
author = {Yongjian Lian and Xurong Bai and Ruoying Yuan and Wenli Xu and Hongjun Mao and Jianfei Peng and Shuai Jiang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.25795},
year = {2026}
}