The project is concerned with the investigation of the fundamental physical background of this novel method for localized accumulation of species from the gas phase. These fundamental findings will provide more understanding on some controversial issues. In particular, the applied method shows a contradiction between theory and experiment. From the theoretical point of view of the transport equations, the observed accumulation rate mostly cannot be explained and there is probably an abnormally high or altered reaction kinetics (higher adsorption rate). The described process combines an interaction of ions, particles from the air, a pre-structured substrate with programmable discharge contact points and the carrier gas. In order to gain a clearer and better understanding of the underlying process, we would like to conduct further targeted experiments in the context of a PhD thesis, which would bring the basic physical phenomena in line with the experiment. The exploration of these fundamental questions is the most important part to be able to open up further fields of application.
One goal is to design an experimental setup that can systematically investigate the relevant process parameters (gas ion concentration, particle number and concentration, locally prevailing gas flow, plasma potential curve). The planned system can be divided into three modules: Aerosol Sources Module (partly already existing), localised deposition module (also partly already existing) and a module for process monitoring (not yet existing). For the management of the research work in this field and for the development of the mentioned process monitoring module we need funds for a PhD position. From an application-oriented point of view we want to focus on the article "Active Matrix Based Collection of Airborne Analytes: An Analyte Recording Chip Providing Exposure History and Finger Print" [3], in which we describe a new approach to capture particles of different types in an active matrix in a time-sorted manner. The fundamental investigations will deal with the design of the recording chip; we expect influencing factors by the array size, the minimum opening size and by concentration differences in the airborne particles to be analyzed. Finally, we want to extend the field of the particles to be analysed and extend it to airborne pathogens from the field of aerobiology. In preparation of this project we have already tested first demonstration experiments with bacteriophages.
