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Direct ink writing of MXene ink on polyimide substrate for the detection of microplastics

Frontiers in Marine Science 2026
Manikandan Mayilmurugan, Seyadu Abuthahir Peer, Meenaakumari Mathialagan, Idayachandran Govindanarayanan, Sathyasree Jayaraman, E. Manikandan

Summary

Scientists have created a cheap, printable sensor that can detect tiny plastic particles (microplastics) using a special printed material called MXene. In early tests, the sensor was sensitive enough to pick up small amounts of microplastics, suggesting it could one day help monitor this pollutant in our environment more easily and affordably. Since microplastics are increasingly found in our food, water, and even our bodies, better detection tools like this could support future efforts to track and manage the health risks they may pose.

Around the world, microplastics (MPs) are an ongoing environmental problem that we have daily. There is an urgent need to mitigate and monitor MPs, a newly identified emerging pollutant. For many years, researchers have been closely working to overcome detection limitations and reduce the possibility of getting false positives or false negatives. This paper discusses the state of I-V sensing technology today and how it can be an inexpensive tool for new contaminant identification and characterization. MXene was prepared by removing the Al layer from Ti 3 AlC 2 MAX phase was attained by the Etching method. The conductive MXene ink was prepared using a mixture of ethylene glycol, glycerol and ethanol. The infill solid pattern is printed using a direct ink writing printer. The optimized printed sample (Device 3) parameters like resistance, conductivity and sheet resistance are measured such as 72 Ω, 3.07 x 10 -3 S/cm and 3.25 x10 2 Ω/sq, respectively. MXene ink shows a sensitivity of 11.442 μA mg/mL cm -2 with LOD and LOQ are 0.462 mg/mL and 1.54 mg/mL. The finding showed the high sensitivity of the approach and indicated that it might be used in the field of microplastic monitoring, with an emphasis on health management.

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