Analysis of aerosol loaded filters by confocal micro-XRF

V. SBARATO; PEREZ, R.D.; PEREZ, C.A.; SÁNCHEZ, H.J

Puebla

Seminario; XII Seminario Latinoamericano de análisis por técnicas de rayos x-SARX2010; 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 preliminary treatment 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. The study was done on  teflon-coated glass fiber filters of Tapered Element Oscillating Microbalance – TEOM and glass fiber filter of High Volume Air Sampler-HVS.