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I have a very simple sensor that basically emits infrared light (1 micron wavelength in the infrared range). The light scatters off particles whose diameter is of the same order of magnitude as the wavelength (Mie scattering). The scattering angle is approximately 90 degrees. A photodiode is located diagonally with respect to the sensor ( scatter angle approx. 90 degress)

Setup

I am trying to find out how to calibrate my device with respect to particle size. I looked through commercial optical particle counters out there, and they don't really explain how they are calibrated. For example, the following is a plot of scattering intensity as a function of diameter, as you can see, there is not a simple relationship between intensity(or photodiode voltage output/my sensor output) and particle diameter.

Does anyone know how commercial particle counters are scaled?

enter image description here

l3win
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1 Answers1

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It's not obvious to me if you want to calibrate your instrument to measure the size of your particles, or to measure the concentration of particles in a volume. I'm assuming you want to measure particle concentration, but most of this applies to either case.

I'm not familiar with the measurement you're describing, but the obvious way to calibrate it is to buy samples of powders of known particle size, disperse them in a known volume, and measure the response of the detector. A web page at the University of Manchester supports this method:

"In practise, theoretical instrument response curves are not used for sizing of particles, rather a series of calibration particles of known size are used to determine the response of the instrument over its full size range. A curve is fitted to these measurements to allow sizing of particles which fall between the calibration points."

If the particles you're measuring are not very tightly distributed in size (say they vary by +/- 50% in diameter), then you probably don't need to worry about the ripples in the Mie scattering curve you showed. Just use an average value of the response over the range of sizes you expect in your sample. To calibrate the instrument you'd need a reference sample with a comparable spread of particle sizes.

Generally with a measurement like this there's so many factors that vary between experiments (maybe the shape of the particles, the amount of turbulence in the sample volume, or other sources of reflected light) that a factory calibration from the instrument vendor isn't likely to be very precise. More likely you'll need to start with a reference measurement in your lab, and then make further measurements relative to that.

The Photon
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  • But surely you have to make the curves collapse somehow to calibrate the instrument? What if I wanted to measure the concentration of particles of unknown size? Let's say I measure perfect spheres for 0.1 micron 0.2 micron, 0.3 micron, and up to 10 micron. Then I know the response from these individual spheres, how should I then calibrate the device so I can know the content of my sample volume that includes spheres of unknown size? The response from a 3 micron at 100 particles/cc is going to be the same as for 70 particles / cc of 4 micron particles. – l3win May 17 '13 at 16:28
  • Even if you don't know the size, if you can make a reference sample of known concentration (say 10,000 parts per liter, or whatever's appropriate), then you can use that to calibrate the response for that type of particles. Then if you measure an unknown sample and get half the response, you know the concentration is 5,000 ppl, for example. – The Photon May 17 '13 at 16:36