Ion beam analysis techniques in aerosol analysis

The three accelerator based ion beam analysis techniques of particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE), particle induced gamma ray emission (PIGME) and particle elastic scattering (PESA) are described. Their application and suitability to aerosol particulate analysis is discussed and it is shown that these ion beam analysis techniques are fast, relatively cheap, non destructive, very sensitive to a broad range of elements across the periodic table from hydrogen to uranium and ideally suited to the elemental analysis of filter papers obtained in these studies. The techniques require access to a megavolt particle accelerator, however, there are hundreds of these available, mainly in nuclear physics laboratories, around the world which have adapted their nuclear structure studies to include ion beam analysis techniques.