PNNL

Abstract

Particle shape is an important attribute that is very difficult to characterize. We present a new portable system that offers, for the first time, the opportunity to separate particles with different shapes and characterize their chemical and physical properties, including their dynamic shape factors (DSFs) in the transition and free-molecular regimes, with high precision, in-situ, and in real-time. The system uses a new generation aerosol particle mass analyzer (APM) to classify particles based on their masses and transport them to a differential mobility analyzer (DMA) that is used to select particles of one charge, one mass, and one shape. These highly uniform particles are ready for use and/or characterization by any application or analytical tool. We combine APM and DMA with our single particle mass spectrometer, SPLAT II, to form the ADS, and demonstrate its utility to measure in real-time individual particle compositions and vacuum aerodynamic diameters to yield, for each selected shape, particle DSFs in two flow regimes. We apply the ADS to characterize aspherical ammonium sulfate and NaCl particles and show that both particle types have wide distribution of particle shapes with DSFs from nearly 1 to 1.5.