Researchers developed an electrochemical method to capture and detect polystyrene nanoplastics from water using proline-functionalized mesoporous silica thin films on screen-printed gold electrodes. The sensor directly captures particles from water bodies, offering a simpler and cheaper alternative to conventional nanoplastic detection methods.
Nanoplastics are capable of penetrating biological membranes and cellular structures and are therefore related to potential environmental and health risks. However, due to their size, nanoplastics monitoring presents a series of technical challenges, including high cost, time-consuming and complex sample preparation, which makes conventional sampling and detection methods less effective and limits their use for in-field detection. In this paper, we present a novel electrochemical sampling and sensing method, facilitating a direct capture of polystyrene nanoparticles from water bodies using proline-functionalized vertically aligned mesoporous silica thin film on gold screen-printed electrode.