Analysis of factors affecting the broadband extinction performance of bioaerosol

Abstract

Bioaerosol shows significant broadband extinction performance and is a new direction for the development of broadband light attenuation materials. However, factors such as material, original particle size, the number of original particles and the structure of agglomerated particles would have impacts on the broadband extinction performance of bioaerosol. In this paper, cluster–cluster aggregation model was used to construct agglomerated particle of bioaerosol, discrete dipole approximation method and Monte Carlo algorithm were performed to calculate the broadband extinction abilities of bioaerosol. The results demonstrate that material selection affects the extinction performance of bioaerosol in different wavebands. Increasing the radius of original particles and decreasing the porosity of agglomerated particle can enhance the broadband extinction abilities of bioaerosol. The structure details and the number of original particles in an agglomerated particle have little impacts on the broadband extinction performance of bioaerosol directly. These conclusions are crucial for the further research of bioaerosol as a new light attenuation material and are applicable to all optical materials with fractal structure.