The fate of engineered nanoparticles (ENP) is the key issue of environmental safety. Most of studies have addressed the effects of aquatic chemistry such as ionic strength, type of salts, and/or organic matter with time and have used light scattering techniques, especially dynamic light scattering which gives the hydrodynamic sizes (z-average). Dynamic light scattering detects the intensities scattered by particles to size them. The biggest concern is that the intensity is not linearly correlated to the size. As the larger particle scatters exponentially more light, DLS may give us the wrong size (z-average, intensity-weighted) of polydisperse suspension (PDI >0.3). Another concern is that DLS is not suitable for measuring NPs at environmentally relevant concentrations (ppt~ppb level). The most stability study, therefore, were performed at higher concentration (ppm level). The SP-ICP-MS is known to give the number-weighted size and size distribution and is good for the environmentally relevant concentration. Here, we applied the SP-ICP-MS to track the formation of aggregates of AgNP with time and discussed the fate of AgNPs at the environmentally relevant concentrations.

AgNP aggregation at environmentally relevant concentrations using SP-ICP-MS

248th National Meeting (2014)

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