Collecting and characterizing atmospheric nanoparticles

This paper describes the development and use of portable thermal precipitators for ultrafine and nanoparticle collection and illustrates their characterization by transmission-electron microscopy. Preliminary analyses found that the collected particulates are aggregates of a few or many hundreds of sub-particles (< 10 nm), and more than three-fourths of these are crystalline, or aggregates of individual, inorganic, crystal grains. This approach to atmospheric nanoparticulate collection and characterization can be applied in indoor and outdoor air-quality monitoring of a wide variety of ultrafine/nanoparticulate materials and materials technologies.