Mass-measurement-type optical particle counting method for determination of number concentration of liquid-borne particles

Abstract

We have developed a measurement method that enables accurate determination of the number concentration of liquid-borne particles by adopting simultaneous particle counting and mass measurement. The new measurement method consists of an optical particle counter (OPC) for particle counting, an electronic balance for mass measurement, a syringe pump for sampling, and a pulse height analyzer for signal processing. We refer to this method as the mass-measurement-type optical particle counting (M-OPC) method. The M-OPC method facilitates both metrological traceability of the mass of measured suspensions and evaluation of the counting efficiency of OPCs. Using the M-OPC method, we evaluated the measurement accuracy of two different types of OPCs: a light-scattering type and a light-extinction type. The validity of the measurement results obtained with the M-OPC method was examined by comparison with the results of an independent microscopic method using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The M-OPC method also offers the possibility of calibrating the number concentration of particles in suspensions with diameters from the sub-micrometer to micrometer range by combining multiple OPCs. This method is expected to be used as the national primary standard at the National Metrology Institute of Japan of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.