Medical and socio-economic issues of respiratory diseases have a major importance in world medicine. Among the conventional minimally invasive procedures in the treatment of respiratory diseases, the aerosoltherapy distinguishes itself by its ability to deliver medication directly into the respiratory tract, such as the sinuses or the tracheal-bronchial tree. In this context, the use of nanoparticles to target the lungs is object of great advances in aerosoltherapy as nanometric aerosols have the ability to overcome obstacles in the upper airways and deposit in the deep lung, increasing the therapeutic and diagnostic performance of these aerosols. In order to contribute with the advance of aerosoltherapy treatments this thesis is directed towards the development of new techniques of generation of nanometric and submicronic aerosols, able to target specific regions of the respiratory system of a patient. The major problem within this context is the adjustment of the aerosol’s particle size in order to promote a targeted deposition in a patient. Therefore, it is firstly necessary to have a wide range of aerosols sizes, from micronic to nanometric, and then it is needed to determine the relationship between particle size and deposition site in the respiratory tract. As a result, the main objectives of this thesis are the metrological characterization of nanometric aerosols and the evaluation of its performance in terms of its deposition in the respiratory tract. The achieved results have demonstrated that is possible to efficiently generate submicronic and nanometric aerosols, either with solid or liquid particles. Aerosols containing a higher amount of nanoparticles showed a larger deposit in the lungs that may contribute to the advancement of aerosoltherapy techniques as well as for toxicological studies.
