Methodology to Estimate the Transfer Function of Individual Differential Mobility Analyzers

A method to estimate the nonideal features of the transfer function of individual differential mobility analyzers (DMA) was developed and tested experimentally. This was up to now an unsolved problem, which is important for the precision in DMA measurements. The method involves three DMAs of unknown characteristics, which are used in three rounds of experiments with two DMAs according to a fixed schedule. The width of the transfer functions of the three DMAs is obtained in a single fitting procedure where one parameter is fitted to each DMA transfer function and the particle losses in each DMA are calculated in direct relation to that parameter and parameters known from the experiment. It was shown that the proposed method could solve the apportioning problem and unambiguously estimate the transfer function width and the particle losses in each of the DMAs.