4.8 Review

Current Methods and Prospects for Analysis and Characterization of Nanomaterials in the Environment

Journal

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Volume 56, Issue 12, Pages 7426-7447

Publisher

AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c08011

Keywords

Natural nanomaterials; engineered nanomaterials; environmental samples; sample pretreatment; abundance; morphology; composition; structure

Funding

  1. National Natural Science Foundation of China [22020102004, 21825403, 22125603, 21976194]
  2. Tianjin Municipal Science and Technology Bureau [21JCJQJC00060, 20JCQNJC02050]
  3. Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Nankai University [63211078, 63213073, 63211065]
  4. Ministry of Education of China [T2017002]
  5. NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment [ERC-1449500]

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Analysis and characterization of nanomaterials in the environment are crucial for understanding their behaviors and assessing environmental risks. However, the complex environmental matrices pose challenges due to the low concentration, structural heterogeneity, and dynamic transformation of nanomaterials.
Analysis and characterization of naturally occurring and engineered nanomaterials in the environment are critical for understanding their environmental behaviors and defining real exposure scenarios for environmental risk assessment. However, this is challenging primarily due to the low concentration, structural heterogeneity, and dynamic transformation of nanomaterials in complex environmental matrices. In this critical review, we first summarize sample pretreatment methods developed for separation and preconcentration of nanomaterials from environmental samples, including natural waters, wastewater, soils, sediments, and biological media. Then, we review the state-of-the-art microscopic, spectroscopic, mass spectrometric, electrochemical, and size-fractionation methods for determination of mass and number abundance, as well as the morphological, compositional, and structural properties of nanomaterials, with discussion on their advantages and limitations. Despite recent advances in detecting and characterizing nanomaterials in the environment, challenges remain to improve the analytical sensitivity and resolution and to expand the method applications. It is important to develop methods for simultaneous determination of multifaceted nanomaterial properties for in situ analysis and characterization of nanomaterials under dynamic environmental conditions and for detection of nanoscale contaminants of emerging concern (e.g., nanoplastics and biological nanoparticles), which will greatly facilitate the standardization of nanomaterial analysis and characterization methods for environmental samples.

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