title: A Micro Aerosol Sensor for the Measurement of Airborne Ultrafine Particles.
abstract: Particle number concentration and particle size are the two key parameters used to characterize exposure to airborne nanoparticles or ultrafine particles that have attracted the most attention. This paper proposes a simple micro aerosol sensor for detecting the number concentration and particle size of ultrafine particles with diameters from 50 to 253 nm based on electrical diffusion charging. The sensor is composed of a micro channel and a couple of planar electrodes printed on two circuit boards assembled in parallel, which thus integrate charging, precipitating and measurement elements into one chip, the overall size of which is 98 × 38 × 25 mm³. The experiment results demonstrate that the sensor is useful for measuring monodisperse aerosol particles with number concentrations from 300 to 2.5 × 10⁴ /cm³ and particle sizes from 50 to 253 nm. The aerosol sensor has a simple structure and small size, which is favorable for use in handheld devices.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instrument, Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. zhangchao14@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instrument, Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. zr_gloria@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Rong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. wmyang@ustb.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Wenming
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Yang
keywords: micro aerosol sensor; number concentration; particle size; ultrafine particles