Reproducible nanoparticle concentration suspension part 2

"Nanomaterial particle sizing has been available for many years initially via ensemble methods (such as DLS) and then through particle by particle techniques (such as NTA, TRPS) and there is now an ISO standard for this. More recently these latter techniques have added the capability to count particles and therefore infer a concentration. However, the metrology associated with this has lagged. NTA is leading technology and has published reproducibility's of +/- 15%. However, without controllable standards and advanced metrology practices the improvement in reproducibility has recently stalled. NPL and LGC have recently worked together in this arena and we find an information asymmetry where each organisation has specific expertise in reference concentration samples (LGC), metrology approaches to assigning uncertainties (NPL), which allows the targeting for further optimisation and instrument development (Malvern Panalytical). Whilst each aspect individually may not be considered innovative, the bringing together of these three skills promises to improve the technology further enhancing the state-of-the-art in nanoparticle concentration measurement.

Therefore we aim to bring together the knowledge of the best practice for handling a new traceable concentration standard from LGC, and the expertise in developing uncertainty measurements (in addition to some work already done on this by LGC), with the concentration calibration and instrument expertise of Malvern Panalytical to advance the process of handling samples and identifying key contributors to variation to reduce variation concentration measurements between Malvern Panalytical's thousands of customers in this field."