Analysis of Aerosol Loaded Filters by Confocal Micro-XRF

V. SBARATO; R.D. PÉREZ; C. A. PÉREZ; H. J. SÁNCHEZ

Puebla

Congreso; SARX 2010; 2010

The   environmental   quality   has   led  an   increased   interest   in   the   multielemental  analysis   of   airborne particulate matter  deposited on  a  suitable  collection  filter.    The  XRF  analysis  avoids  any  preliminarytreatment  of  the  sample,  which  can  be  suitable for  further  investigations.  It  can  be  applied to  material collected  on  different  types  of  filters.  Moreover,  it  is  applicable for  the  energy  dispersive and  wavelength dispersive method.    However,  the  general  applicability of  the  method  is  limited because  the  spectral response is affected by matrix effects.   For  some  aerosol  loaded filters,  the  particulate matter  penetrates  to  some  extent,  thus  giving  rise  to  a higher  X-ray  absorption  in  the  filter, which  to  be  taken  into account  for  accurate  results.  In  conventional XRF,  an   estimation   of   the   particulate  depth   profile   into   the   filter   is   required  for   a   multielemental quantification.  In  the  present paper,  a  quantitative  analysis is  obtained  by  determining  experimentally the depth  profile  of  the  air  particulate on  aerosol  loaded filters  by  confocal  micro-XRF.