Morphology of working environment microparticles

Depth resolved analyses of industrial microparticles collected in the worki ng environment of steelworks and glass plant are presented. Grain size dist ributions of aerosol microparticles were estimated using the eight-stage ca scade impactor with the particle size range of 0.2-15 mum. Bulk analysis of the collected dust particles was performed using the spark source mass spe ctrometry and X-ray diffraction methods. The morphology, i.e. the elemental structure of collected sub-micrometer particles was described due to ion s puttering experiments using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) depth pr ofiling. These analyses were performed on the two SIMS instruments: on SAJW -02 equipped with Balzers 16 mm quadrupole spectrometer using 4 keV Ar+ and O-2(+) ion beam and also on IMS-3F Cameca using 12 keV O-2(+) ion beam. Th e obtained results show that the sub-micrometer particles do not have unifo rm morphology. The core-shell structure has been observed for particles col lected in both factories. The presented models show that steelworks particl es consist mainly of iron and manganese cores. At the shells of these micro particles lead, chlorine and fluorine are found. The particles collected in the glass plant consist mainly of lead-zirconium glass cores covered by ca rbon and copper. The sample rotation technique applied in SIMS appears to b e an effective tool for environmental microparticle morphology studies. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.