Chemical characterization of aerosols

The increasing importance of aerosols understanding the environmetal processes as well as the use of aerosol technologies has led to a great interest in aerosol characterization. Principally one can divide aerosol characterization into a physical and a chemical part. The physical part includes the determination of particle concentration, particle size distribution, microstructure of particles and the measurement of p, T and relative humidity. The chemical characterization includes the characterization of the gas phase, chemical composition of the particle collective and chemical composition of a single particle. The chemical description of microstructures is of special interest. Microstructure means that some constituents are not homogeneously distributed over the whole particle cross-section. Characterization of aerosols is heavily influenced by the sampling procedure itself. Therefore many efforts are made in order to avoid sampling of aerosols: in situ and on-line analysis is requested. New trends and first results are presented including laser-induced fluorescence and aerosol photoemission.