Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Volume 54, Issue 24, Pages 15594-15603Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.0c02317
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [21976030, 21677037]
- Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China [2016YFE0112200, 2016YFC0202700]
- Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai [19ZR1471200, 17ZR1440200]
- Royal Society [PEF1\170015, RGF\EA\180228]
- EPSRC iCASE Studentships Program
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Micro- and nanoplastics are considered one of the top pollutants that threaten the environment, aquatic life, and mammalian (including human) health. Unfortunately, the development of uncomplicated but reliable analytical methods that are sensitive to individual microplastic particles, with sizes smaller than 1 mu m, remains incomplete. Here, we demonstrate the detection and identification of (single) micro- and nanoplastics by using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) with Klarite substrates. Klarite is an exceptional SERS substrate; it is shaped as a dense grid of inverted pyramidal cavities made of gold. Numerical simulations demonstrate that these cavities (or pits) strongly focus incident light into intense hotspots. We show that Klarite has the potential to facilitate the detection and identification of synthesized and atmospheric/aquatic microplastic (single) particles, with sizes down to 360 nm. We find enhancement factors of up to 2 orders of magnitude for polystyrene analytes. In addition, we detect and identify microplastics with sizes down to 450 nm on Klarite, with samples extracted from ambient, airborne particles. Moreover, we demonstrate Raman mapping as a fast detection technique for submicron microplastic particles. The results show that SERS with Klarite is a facile technique that has the potential to detect and systematically measure nanoplastics in the environment. This research is an important step toward detecting nanoscale plastic particles that may cause toxic effects to mammalian and aquatic life when present in high concentrations.
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