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Label-free impedimetric analysis of microplastics dispersed in aqueous media polluted by Pb2+ ions
Summary
Researchers developed a simple electrochemical method to distinguish between clean and lead-contaminated microplastics in water without needing complex laboratory equipment. The technique uses impedance measurements to rapidly detect whether microplastics carry adsorbed heavy metal pollutants. The approach could be useful for quick field assessments of how contaminated microplastics are in environmental water samples.
The rapid differentiation between polluted and unpolluted microplastics (MPs) is critical for tracking their presence in the environment and underpinning their potential risks to humans. However, the quantitative analysis of polluted microplastics on the field is limited by the lack of rapid methods that do not need optical analysis nor their capture onto sophisticated electrochemical sensor platforms. Herein, a simple analytical approach for MPs dispersed in aqueous media leveraging electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) analysis on screen-printed sensors is presented. This method is demonstrated by the EIS-based analysis of two standards of microplastics beads (MPs), one of polystyrene (PS) and one of polystyrene carboxylated (PS-COOH), when exposed to aqueous solutions containing Pb2+ ions. The adsorption of Pb2+ ions on the MPs was quantitatively determined by voltammetric analysis. EIS permitted to rapidly (about 2 minutes) differentiate clean MPs from the Pb2+ polluted ones. These results could constitute a first-step towards the realization of a portable impedimetric sensor for the quantification of microplastics polluted by metal ions in aqueous solutions.