Internal Composition of Atmospheric Dust Particles from Focused Ion-Beam Scanning Electron Microscopy
Use of focused ion-beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) to investigate the internal composition of atmospheric particles is demonstrated for assessing particle optical properties. In the FIB-SEM instrument equipped with an X-ray detector, a gallium-ion beam mills the particle, while the elect...
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Published in | Environmental science & technology Vol. 47; no. 15; pp. 8575 - 8581 |
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Main Author | |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Washington, DC
American Chemical Society
06.08.2013
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Use of focused ion-beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) to investigate the internal composition of atmospheric particles is demonstrated for assessing particle optical properties. In the FIB-SEM instrument equipped with an X-ray detector, a gallium-ion beam mills the particle, while the electron beam images the slice faces and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy provides element maps of the particle. Differences in assessments of optical behavior based on FIB-SEM and conventional SEM were shown for five selected urban dust particles. The benefit of FIB-SEM for accurately determining the depth and size of optically important phases within particles was shown. FIB-SEM revealed that iron oxide grains left undetected by conventional SEM could potentially shift the single-scattering albedo of the particle from negative to positive radiative forcing. Analysis of a coke-like particle showed that 73% of the light-scattering inclusion went undetected with conventional SEM, causing the bulk absorption coefficient to vary by as much as 25%. Optical property calculations for particles as volume-equivalent spheres and as spheroids that approximated actual particle shapes revealed that the largest effect between conventional SEM and FIB-SEM analyses was on backscattering efficiency, in some cases varying several-fold. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-2 ObjectType-Feature-1 |
ISSN: | 0013-936X 1520-5851 |
DOI: | 10.1021/es400727x |