An electrical conductivity based method of determining the particle deposition rate in air-liquid interface devices

摘要

A new in-situ method of determining the particle deposition rate onto cell cultures inside air-liquid interface devices is described. It is based on depositing a surrogate aerosol of salt particles onto the water filled wells of a culture plate while measuring the resulting change in electrical conductivity of the solution in situ, in order to derive the accumulated particle mass. For evaluation purposes, the wells of a six-well cell culture plate were equipped with custom designed electrodes and calibrated with a series of commercially available standard solutions. After the necessary corrections prescribed by theory, the calibration resulted in an accuracy and comparability between cells of +/- 3% in terms of measured conductivity. The method was then applied to a specific ALI device consisting essentially of the calibrated six-well culture plate inside an electrostatic cross-flow precipitator, and tested with submicron NaCl aerosol of defined size distribution produced by nebulization of a salt solution. 2 h of particle accumulation were sufficient to accumulate between 30 and 10 mu g of salt per well, depending on the location in the precipitator. Resulting deposition rates varied narrowly between the wells by about 2 ng min(-1) cm(-2). Factors affecting the overall accuracy and reproducibility are discussed. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.