A NANO-PLASMONIC BIOSENSOR FOR FAST AND HIGHLY SENSITIVE DETECTION OF NANOPLASTICS

Nanoplastics are a global emerging environmental problem. Despite the relevance of the issue, fast, quantitative and reliable in situ analytical approaches to determine nanoplastics are not yet readily available. The aim of this work was to devise an optical sensor with the goal of direct detecting and quantifying nanoplastics in seawater. The biosensor was developed by grafting onto a gold-nanograting (GNG) plasmonic platform1 a biological receptor2 as recognition element. As a result, the biosensor required just minute sample volumes (2 μL), allowed rapid detection (3 minutes) and enabled to determine nanoplastics in simulated seawater with a linear dynamic concentrations range across five orders of magnitude (1 - 10000 ng/mL), thus encompassing the expected environmental loads. At last, the ER-GNG biosensor was tested on real seawater samples and the results were verified by a conventional approach, confirming the ER-GNG sensor offers a straightforward and highly sensitive method for the direct in-field nanoplastics monitoring.