Optimizing aerodynamic lenses for single-particle imaging

TL;DR

This paper presents a numerical simulation framework for optimizing aerodynamic lens injectors, improving understanding of particle trajectories, validating results with experiments, and proposing new designs to enhance single-particle imaging.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation infrastructure that predicts and optimizes aerosol injector geometries, validated against experimental data, and identifies weaknesses in current designs for single-particle imaging.

Findings

Validated simulations with experimental data for 500 nm spheres

Identified weaknesses in current aerosol injectors

Developed new injector designs to overcome limitations

Abstract

A numerical simulation infrastructure capable of calculating the flow of gas and the trajectories of particles through an aerodynamic lens injector is presented. The simulations increase the fundamental understanding and predict optimized injection geometries and parameters. Our simulation results were compared to previous reports and also validated against experimental data for 500 nm polystyrene spheres from an aerosol-beam- characterization setup. The simulations yielded a detailed understanding of the radial phase-space distribution and highlighted weaknesses of current aerosol injectors for single-particle diffractive imaging. With the aid of these simulations we developed new experimental implementations to overcome current limitations.