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Decoupling Free-Iron-Oxide Masking Enables Hyperspectral Quantification of Microplastics in Iron-Rich Purple Soil
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Scientists developed a new method to detect tiny plastic particles (microplastics) hidden in iron-rich red soils, which are common in farmland but usually mask plastic signals from standard scanning tools. This matters because tracking microplastics in soil is a key step toward understanding how they might enter our food supply through crops grown in contaminated dirt. While the technique works well for higher levels of plastic contamination, researchers still need to improve it to catch smaller, more realistic amounts found in the environment.
Abstract Reliable hyperspectral measurement of microplastics in soil is compromised by structured mineral interference. Here, we identify free iron oxides (Fed) as a directional, gradient-dependent masking factor in iron-rich purple soil and develop target-orthogonal, gradient-weighted external parameter orthogonalization (TO-GW-EPO) to remove iron-associated spectral variation while preserving polymer information. A 5 × 5 factorial design covered measured Fed contents of 0.08–7.84 wt % and polyethylene (PE) loadings of 0–5 wt %. Increasing Fed depressed the reflectance continuum, attenuated C–H-related PE features near 1200 and 1395 nm, and weakened the concentration–peak-depth relationship; the 1395 nm masking index reached 79.0%, and r(PE,D1395) decreased from 0.94 to 0.13. Relative to standard EPO, TO-GW-EPO increased target-signal retention from 65.0% to 82.5%. Coupled with competitive adaptive reweighted sampling and a one-dimensional convolutional neural network, the workflow achieved Rp2 = 0.89, RMSEP = 0.63 wt %, RPD = 2.98, and an estimated LOD of 0.95 wt % for PE. These results support rapid screening and semiquantitative-to-quantitative analysis of relatively high-load samples under iron-rich mineral backgrounds. Extending accurate prediction to lower environmental concentrations remains a priority for future optimization. PET-specific reconstruction and retraining achieved Rp2 = 0.78 and RPD = 2.12, supporting workflow-level transferability to PET. This study establishes a physically constrained and interpretable strategy for reliable hyperspectral measurement under structured mineral-matrix interference.
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