Particulate matter (PM) is the sum of all solid and liquid particles suspended in air. PM research is important not only as basic scientific research but also because it can potentially have a huge impact on public health and quality of life. PM is an important cause of diseases (respiratory and cardiovascular). Insufficient understanding of creation and dynamics of PM in atmosphere significantly contributes to the uncertainty of climate models. In addition, PM research at Department of Physics is important because of recently established interdisciplinary graduate study programme Physics and Environmental Sciences. Before that environmental research was not in the focus of Department.

In Laboratory for elemental microanalysis we have developed expertise in determining elemental composition of PM. Basic technique, performed in the Laboratory, is X-ray fluorescence (XRF).  In addition, we have a long collaboration with the Laboratory for ion beam interactions at Ruđer Bošković Institute where we use other techniques to determine concentrations of hydrogen (not possible with XRF) and low atomic number elements (such as Al, Si) for which our XRF setup is not sensitive enough. So far we have collected and analysed more than 300 samples and performed statistical analyses to determine fingerprints of PM sources and their relative contribution.

With this project we extend the applications of PM analysis. Two main research activities are analysis of indoor (metal workshops) PM and detection of Sahara dust events. They correspond to proposed PhD theses of two collaborators on the project. Besides PM analyses, project activities include development of experimental method: upgrading XRF setup to include He atmosfere (this will increase sensitivity for low atomic number elements by tenfold) and development of software for XRF spectra analysis.