Emerging as substantial concerns in the ecosystem, submicron
plastics
have attracted much attention for their considerable hazards. However,
their effect and even amount in the environment remain unclear. Establishing
a substantive analytic platform is essential to expand the understanding
of nanoplastics. However, the issues of diffusion and detection limit
that arise from ultradiluted concentration and extremely small scales
of nanoplastics leave significant technical hurdles to analyze the
nanoplastic pollutants. In this study, we obtain effective Raman signals
in real time from underwater nanoplastics with ultralow concentrations via AC electro-osmotic flows and dielectrophoretic tweezing.
This enables the field-induced active collection of nanoplastics toward
the optical sensing area from remote areas in a rapid manner, integrating
conventional technical skills of preconcentration, separation, and
identification in a single process. A step further, synergetic combination
with plasmonic nanorods, accomplishes the highest on-site detection
performance so far.
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