ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the latest publications on single-particle analysis of individual environmental aerosol particles obtained by the most frequently used microbeam techniques. The characterization of individual North Sea aerosol particles by electron probe X-ray microanalysis/scanning electron microscopy–EDX in combination with multivariate techniques has been one of the main topics for several years in the University of Antwerp group. In conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electrons transmitted through the sample are investigated by illuminating the whole imaged specimen area with a fixed defocused electron probe. The electron energy loss spectrometry instrument was developed by supplying the optical column of a conventional TEM with a magnetic prism spectrometer, positioned between the imaging lenses. Laser microprobe mass spectrometry uses a high-power, density-pulsed laser beam for the evaporation and ionization of a microvolume of the sample. The Raman spectroscopic technique was developed in 1928 and has been used mainly for bulk analysis.
