Requested White Paper
Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis - A minireview
Nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) is a new technique for the rapid, direct and real-time
visualisation of nanoparticles in a liquid. Based on a laser-illuminated optical microscope,
nanoparticles are seen as light-scattering centres moving under Brownian motion. A video of the
movement of each particle is analysed on a frame-by-fame basis and the particle’s size is established
from an analysis of the average speed of movement. Because each particle is measured separately, it
is possible to measure particle size and relative light-scattering intensity at the same time, allowing
better resolution of mixtures of different particle sizes or types within a sample than would be
possible with conventional dynamic light-scattering techniques such as photon correlation
spectroscopy. Importantly, particle count or concentration can be recovered. This review
summarises the applications and sample types to which NTA has been applied to date.
