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Morphology and property investigation of primary particulate matter particles from different sources

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Abstract

Particulate matter (PM) pollution has become a major environmental concern in many developing countries. PM pollution control remains a great challenge owing to the complex sources and evolution processes of PM particles. There are two categories of PM, i.e., primary and secondary PM particles, and the primary PM emissions play a key role in the formation of PM pollution. Knowledge of primary PM particle compositions, sources, and evolution processes is of great importance to the effective control of PM pollution. In order to characterize PM particles effectively, their fundamental properties including the morphology, concentration distribution, surface chemistry, and composition must be systematically investigated. In this study, we collected and analyzed six types of PM10 and PM2.5 particles from different sources using an in situ sampling approach. The concentration distributions of PM particles were analyzed and comparative analysis of the morphologies, distributions, capture mechanisms, and compositions of PM particles was conducted using scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. We found that there were significant differences in the structures, morphologies, and capture mechanisms of PM2.5 and PM10 particles. The systematic comparative investigation in this work will benefit the study of evolution processes and the effective control of PM pollution in the future.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Yuanqing Li for fruitful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Rufan Zhang, Chong Liu, Guangmin Zhou, Jie Sun, Nian Liu, Po-Chun Hsu, Haotian Wang, Yongcai Qiu, Jie Zhao, Tong Wu, Wenting Zhao & Yi Cui

  2. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA

    Yi Cui

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  1. Rufan Zhang
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Zhang, R., Liu, C., Zhou, G. et al. Morphology and property investigation of primary particulate matter particles from different sources. Nano Res. 11, 3182–3192 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1724-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1724-y

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