Characteristics of aerosol charge distribution by surface-discharge microplasma aerosol charger (SMAC)

Abstract

The surface discharge on a dielectric barrier induced by dc pulses was successfully utilized as a stable bipolar ion source for neutralizing submicron aerosol particles where the concentration of positive and negative ions could be adjusted independently (a surface-discharge microplasma aerosol charger: SMAC; Kwon et al., 2005). The aim of this study was to determine the charge distribution obtained by the SMAC, which has been qualitatively presented in our previous study, and to investigate the effect of unequal bipolar ion concentration on the charge distribution. For this purpose, we performed quantitative analysis of the charge distribution of monodisperse particles in the size range of 30-200 nm acquired by the SMAC and compared the charge distributions with calculated charge fractions obtained from the diffusion charging theory. The ion parameters were calculated by measuring the ion mobility of positive and negative ions and they were used to obtain the analytic solutions of charge distribution. The charge distributions obtained by the equal or unequal concentration of bipolar ions adjusted by the SMAC showed general agreement with the diffusion charging theory. Copyright © American Association for Aerosol Research.