Two-dimensional angular scattering measurements of single airborne microparticles

摘要

The detection and characterization of micro-particles, particularly airborne biological particles, is currently of great interest. We present a novel technique for recording the 2D angular scattering pattern from a single airborne microparticle. Angular scattering measurements were performed in both the near-forward and near-backward regions for a variety of particles including for ethanol droplets, single polystyrene latex spheres, psl clusters, and clusters of Bacillus subtilis spores, all of various sizes. Because the angular scattering pattern is sensitive to size, shape and refractive index, the angular feature associate with clusters may be used to better characterize such airborne micro-particles. A watershed image processing routine has also been implemented. Through this routine, the number of intensity patches per solid angles is found to increase with cluster diameter.