The on-line chemical analysis of single particles using aerosol beams and time of flight mass spectrometry

This paper describes an on-line instrument, capable of measuring the size and chemical composition of single aerosol particles. Possible applications include monitoring aerosol reactors and studying atmospheric chemistry. The main conclusion is that a working prototype has been built and tested. It uses a three stage vacuum system to generate an aerosol beam with a low divergence angle and a high transmittance. The pressure is reduced sufficiently to allow the application of a time-of-flight mass analyzer. The aerosol beam is probed in the analysis section by the focused beam of a low-power helium-neon laser. Every particle crossing the laser beam scatters light, which is detected by two photomultiplier tubes, mounted at angles of 45 and 90 degrees. The signal is stored when both detectors produce a pulse simultaneously, and this event triggers the chemical analysis cycle. A pulsed Nd:YAG laser vaporizes the particle and generates ions, which are next analyzed by a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. In this way combined information on the size and the composition of the particle is obtained.