Characterization of Nanoparticles for Nanomaterial Environmental Health and Safety Studies: The Physics and Metrology for Several Common Approaches

Tiered risk as sessment approaches for nanomaterial environmental health and safety (nanoEHS) require a detailed understanding of the size and the size distribution of the material being used. There are many metrological tools to choose from, each with its own strengths and weaknesses that influence the results being reported on the exact same batch of material. This review analyzes the physics and metrology in several commonly employed techniques for characterizing nanoparticle (NP) sizes and size distributions and presents how this leads to variations in the reported results. Finally, a case study applying this knowledge to measuring silver (Ag) NP systems is presented, including business-based examples for selecting high-throughput, low-cost measurement approaches for production quality control, and it validates these approaches with goldstandard techniques and statistically significant sampling plans.