Nanostructured Raman substrates for the sensitive detection of submicrometer-sized plastic pollutants in water

Quang Trung Lê; Nguyễn Hoàng Ly; Moon-Kyung Kim; Soon Hyuk Lim; Sang Jun Son; Kyung-Duk Zoh; Sang-Woo Joo

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.123499

Nanostructured Raman substrates for the sensitive detection of submicrometer-sized plastic pollutants in water

J Hazard Mater. 2021 Jan 15:402:123499. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.123499. Epub 2020 Jul 16.

Authors

Quang Trung Lê¹, Nguyễn Hoàng Ly², Moon-Kyung Kim³, Soon Hyuk Lim⁴, Sang Jun Son⁴, Kyung-Duk Zoh³, Sang-Woo Joo⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Information Communication Convergence Technology, Soongsil University, Seoul, 06978, Republic of Korea.
² Department of Chemistry, Soongsil University, Seoul, 06978, Republic of Korea.
³ Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Republic of Korea.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Gachon University, Seongnam, 13120, Republic of Korea.
⁵ Department of Information Communication Convergence Technology, Soongsil University, Seoul, 06978, Republic of Korea; Department of Chemistry, Soongsil University, Seoul, 06978, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: sjoo@ssu.ac.kr.

PMID: 32739725
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.123499

Abstract

We prepared novel Raman substrates for the sensitive detection of submicron-sized plastic spheres in water. Anisotropic nanostar dimer-embedded nanopore substrates were prepared for the efficient identification of submicron-sized plastic spheres by providing internal hot spots of electromagnetic field enhancements at the tips of nanoparticles. Silver-coated gold nanostars (AuNSs@Ag) were inserted into anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) nanopores for enhanced microplastic (MP) detection. We found that surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates of AuNSs@Ag@AAO yielded stronger signals at the same weight percentages for polystyrene MP particles with diameters as small as 0.4 μm, whereas such behaviors could not be observed for larger MPs (diameters of 0.8 μm, 2.3 μm, and 4.8 μm). The detection limit of the submicrometer-sized 0.4 μm in our Raman measurements were estimated to be 0.005% (∼0.05 mg/g =50 ppm) along with a fast detection time of only a few min without any sample pretreatments. Our nano-sized dimensional matching substrates may provide a useful tool for the application of SERS substrates for submicrometer MP pollutants in water.

Keywords: Anodized aluminum oxides; Microplastic detection; Silver-coated gold nanostars; Surface-enhanced Raman scattering; Water pollutants.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't