A PCB type aerosol sensor for measuring nanoscale aerosol particles

In this paper, we propose a PCB-type aerosol sensor to detect number concentration and diameter of nanoscale aerosol particles based on the electrical detection principle, the structure of which is very simple and the size is very small compared with traditional aerosol instruments. The sensor consists of charging stage, precipitation stage and sensing stage. The preliminary experiments on the corona discharge performance and the capability of aerosol measurement using the sensor showed that the ion concentration produced by the corona discharge was about 10¹⁹/m³ order of magnitude and the aerosol sensor can discriminate different number concentration and mean diameter distributed lognormally with the maximum value in the range of 100-368nm respectively.