Passive air samplers (PASs) have been used for mapping gaseous mercury concentration in extensive areas. In this work, an easy-to-use and -prepare gold nanoparticle (NP)-based PAS has been investigated. The PAS is constituted of a microfibrous quartz disk filter impregnated of gold NP photo-growth on TiO2 NPs (Au@TiO2) and used as gaseous mercury adsorbing material. The disk was housed in a cylinder glass container and subjected to an axial diffusive sampling. The adsorbed mercury was measured by thermal desorption using a Tekran® instrument. Different amounts of Au@TiO2 (ranging between 4.0 and 4.0 × 10-3 mg) were deposited by drop-casting onto the fibrous substrate and assessed for about 1 year of deployment in outdoor environment with a mercury concentration mean of about 1.24 ± 0.32 ng/m3 in order to optimize the adsorbing layer. PASs showed a linear relation of the adsorbed mercury as a function of time with a rate of 18.5 ± 0.4 pg/day (≈1.5% of the gaseous concentration per day). However, only the PAS with 4 mg of Au@TiO2, provided with a surface density of about 3.26 × 10-2 mg/mm2 and 50 μm thick inside the fibrous quartz, kept stability in working, with a constant sampling rate (SR) (0.0138 ± 0.0005 m3/day) over an outdoor monitoring experimental campaign of about 1 year. On the other hand, higher sampling rates have been found when PASs were deployed for a few days, making these tools also effective for one-day monitoring. Furthermore, these PASs were used and re-used after each thermal desorption to confirm the chance to reuse such structured layers within their samplers, thus supporting the purpose to design inexpensive, compact and portable air pollutant sampling devices, ideal for assessing both personal and environmental exposures. During the whole deployment, PASs were aided by simultaneous Tekran® measurements.
Keywords: Au-TiO2 nanoparticles; axial diffusion; gaseous mercury pollution; monitoring campaign; passive sampler; thermal desorption.