California Institute of Technology

The United States of America As Represented by the Administrator of the

David D Norris

Charles E Giffin

Mahadeva P Sinha

Sheldon K Friedlander

A system is provided for analyzing the particles in aerosols, as in making air pollution studies, which enables the making of rapid chemical analyses of particles. The system includes an apparatus for producing a controlled stream of individual particles to be analyzed from an environment, and an apparatus for vaporizing and ionizing the particles while they move in free flight, for analysis by a mass spectrometer. The apparatus for producing a stream of particles includes a capillary tube through which the air with suspended particles moves, a skimmer device having a small opening spaced from an end of the capillary tube to receive particles passing through the tube, and a vacuum pump for pumping air out of the space between the tube and skimmer. The vacuum pump serves to remove much of the gas from around the particles, while also creating an inflow of air and particles through the capillary tube. The particles passing through the skimmer opening can be simultaneously vaporized and ionized while in free flight, by a laser beam of sufficient intensity that is directed across the path of the free flying particles.

Particle analyzing method and apparatus

A fiber optic device consists of bundles of fiber optic rods which extend from an input face of the device, to which images of a spectrogram are directed to an output face. The input and output faces of the bundles are corrected so that images of a spectrogram, which are either tilted with respect to the spectrogram's height axis or are curved due to Berry curvature, pass through the device and appear at its output face in directions perpendicular to the spectrograms length axis and parallel to its height.

Growing community of inventors

San Gariel, CA, United States of America

David D Norris