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A New Class of Reference Material: Additivly Manufactured Monodisperse Number Accurate Microplastic Reference Material through Microextrusion
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Researchers developed a new method for producing microplastic reference materials with precise, known sizes and quantities — a critical need for standardizing how scientists measure and compare microplastics across different studies. Using a microextrusion process with specialized nozzles, they produced batches of 1,000 uniform particles in about one hour from a range of plastics including LDPE, nylon, PLA, and PMMA, with particle diameters between 224 and 1,349 micrometers. Lack of standardized reference materials has been a persistent bottleneck in microplastics research; having reliable, reproducible standards will improve the quality and comparability of future studies. This is a technical but important methodological advance for the field.
Abstract The availability of numerically precise, monodisperse microplastic reference materials of exact size is pivotal for standardizing analytical techniques and promoting research and industrial applications. A novel production method for microplastic reference using a microextrusion process and specially designed nozzles produced particles in exact quantities and sizes. The method is almost error-free, cost-effective, and time-saving, with the production of 1000 particles requiring approximately one hour. To date, particles of LDPE, PA, PLA, PCL, and PMMA have been reproduced in uniform batches, containing particles of the same size in a range between 224 µm and 1349 µm in diameter, with a standard deviation of the particle sizes of less than 10%. The adjustment of particle size is facilitated by the employment of diverse nozzle diameters, a method that has the potential to further minimize the minimum particle size. This approach also enables the utilization of a wide range of thermoplastic materials.
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