Buoyancy-Driven Multifunctional Microbubbles for The Enrichment and Detection of Nanoplastics

Abstract Nanoplastic pollution has attracted increasing attention because it poses significant threats to aquatic ecosystems and human health. However, the rapid and sensitive detection of nanoplastics is hindered by their complex preconcentration process and the lack of signal amplification strategies. Herein, tannic acid-decorated hollow glass microbubbles (TA-HGMs) are employed for the integrated enrichment and ultra-sensitive detection of nanoplastics. Benefiting from the high-affinity interaction between tannic acid and nanoplastic particles as well as the intrinsic self-floating property of HGMs, TA-HGMs enable rapid and efficient capture of nanoplastics within 10 min with a high loading capacity of about 332.75 ± 1.15 mg/g, eliminating the need for complex treatment and precision equipment. In addition, TA-HGM can efficiently enhance the fluorescence signals to enable high-sensitive fluorescent sensing of nanoplastics (10−6 mg/mL lowest detectable concentration), which is much lower than the previously reported fluorescence-based nanoplastic detection methods. Moreover, by adopting surface-enhanced Raman scattering technology, the TA-HGMs can simultaneously distinguish different types of nanoplastics. This integrated strategy realizes rapid capture, efficient enrichment, sensitive detection, and classification of nanoplastics in environmental water samples, which shows great potential for urgent traceability and governance of nanoplastic pollution.