Development of the Honeycomb Film Filter for Individual Aerosol Particle Analysis

Abstract

A novel portable particle sampler with a polymer honeycomb film filter has been developed. The high aperture ratio of the honeycomb film reduces the flow resistance and enables high-volume sampling as a portable sampler. The pore size of the honeycomb film is very uniform so that it can selectively capture aerosol particles with a specific size. Because each aerosol particle is captured separately on the surface of the filter, captured particles can be readily observed without separation and extraction preprocessing. It was examined that even transparent fibers such as rockwool and asbestos can be observed with optical microscopy without preprocessing. Preliminary field sampling of sea salt particles and bioaerosols showed that the developed honeycomb film filter sampler was very useful for the analysis of single particles.