Capabilities of Single Particle Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry for the Size Measurement of Nanoparticles: A Case Study on Gold Nanoparticles

Published

February 28, 2014

Author(s)

Jingyu Liu, Karen E. Murphy, Robert I. MacCuspie, Michael R. Winchester

Abstract

The increasing application of engineered nanomaterials in consumer and medical products has motivated the development of single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (spICP-MS) for characterizing nanomaterials under realistic environmental exposure conditions. Recent studies have established a set of metrological criteria and evaluated the feasibility of spICP-MS for sizing and/or quantifying various highly commercialized ENMs. Less is known about the performance of spICP- MS for detecting nanoparticles with sizes greater than 80 nm, even though agglomeration/aggregation is one of the most common fates of NPs in the environment. This paper presents a systematic study on spICP-MS for accurate size measurement of gold nanoparticles from 10 nm to 200 nm. We show that dwell time contributes significantly to the quality of data. The optimal dwell time that limits split particle events, particle coincidences and false positives is 10 ms. Using a dwell time of 0.1 ms, we demonstrate for the first time that transient features of single particle events can be temporally resolved on a conventional quadrupole ICP-MS system. We propose an intensity-size diagram for estimating the linear dynamic size range and guiding the selection of ICP-MS operating conditions. The linear dynamic size range of the ICP-MS system under standard (highest) sensitivity condition is 10 nm to 70 nm, but can be further extended to 200 nm by operating in lowered sensitivity modes. Finally, the ability of spICP-MS to characterize heterogeneous forms of metal containing nanoparticles is evaluated in mixtures containing both dissolved and poly-disperse nanoparticulate Au.

Citation

Analytical Chemistry

Volume

86

Issue

7

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/ac403775a

Keywords

Single particle ICP-MS, Gold nanoparticles, Size measurement

Citation

Liu, J. , Murphy, K. , MacCuspie, R. and Winchester, M. (2014), Capabilities of Single Particle Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry for the Size Measurement of Nanoparticles: A Case Study on Gold Nanoparticles, Analytical Chemistry, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/ac403775a (Accessed October 12, 2025)