Characterization of a Commercially Available Aerosol Raman Hyperspectral Imaging Instrument for Single Particle Analysis

MAXWELL FREEMAN, J. Alex Huffman, University of Denver

     Abstract Number: 757
     Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods

Abstract
Aerosol particles play critical roles in climate forcing, as nuclei for ice and cloud formation, and have had increasingly prominent impacts on human respiratory health in recent years. Raman spectroscopy provides structural chemical information that facilitates the detection and identification of particles of various compositions. The Aerosol Raman Hyperspectral Imager (ARHI), commercially available through Battelle as the Resource Effective Bio-Identification System (REBS), was designed primarily to detect airborne agents of biological warfare, but can also be applied more broadly for the measurement of particles of biological and non-biological origin. Here we present preliminary data demonstrating the ability of the ARHI to detect and identify different aerosol materials, and we compare its performance to a commercially available aerosol fluorescence instrument.