Nanoplastic analysis enabled by CF3 coupled with MALS and raman microscopy

The hyphenation of centrifugal field-flow fractionation (CF3) with UV, MALS and raman detection enables the simultaneous detection, sizing and chemical identification of polydisperse nanoplastic mixtures. Because of the wide range of polymers potentially present in nanoplastics, CF3 is an ideal separation technique as it can fractionate those particles with similar size but different mass or density. The design of the raman flow cell used in this study takes advantage of the principle of optical particle trapping and can also be used in conjunction with other FFF techniques such as asymmetrical flow field-flow fractionation. In addition, this setup is not restricted to the characterization of nanoplastic particles but can also be useful for nanomaterial characterization in general.