Characterisation of atmospheric fine particles using IBA techniques

Abstract

The study of fine particles in the atmosphere with diameters less than 2.5 μm has recently become of considerable interest to a broad range of researchers. Often these fine particles are collected on thin filters by samplers sucking air through them. These thin filters are ideal targets for analysis and characterisation by accelerator based ion beam analysis (IBA) methods. The IBA methods can analyse each of these filters, non-destructively, in a few minutes of accelerator running time for up to 30 different elements from hydrogen to uranium. This ability to readily characterise the fine particle composition on hundreds of filters means that statistical methods such as principal components analysis (PCA) and chemical mass balance (CMB) techniques can be used to determine the source fingerprints and source contributions for these large area sampling networks.