Li Wanyuan, Wu Changjin, Xiong Ze, Liang Chaowei, Li Ziyi, Liu Baiyao, Cao Qinyi, Wang Jizhuang, Tang Jinyao, Li Dan
College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, P. R. China.
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Functional Supramolecular Coordination Materials and Applications, Jinan University, Guangzhou, P. R. China.
Sci Adv. 2022 Nov 11;8(45):eade1731. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ade1731. Epub 2022 Nov 9.
Micro/nanoplastic (MNP) contamination in nonmarine waters has evolved into a notable ecotoxicological threat to the global ecosystem. However, existing strategies for MNP removal are typically limited to chemical flocculation or physical filtering that often fails to decontaminate plastic particulates with ultrasmall sizes or ultralow concentrations. Here, we report a self-driven magnetorobot comprising magnetizable ion-exchange resin sphere that can be used to dynamically remove or separate MNPs from nonmarine waters. As a result of the long-range electrophoretic attraction established by recyclable ion-exchange resin, the magnetorobot shows sustainable removal efficiency of >90% over 100 treatment cycles, with verified broad applicability to varying plastic compositions, sizes, and shapes as well as nonmarine water samples. Our work may facilitate industry-scale MNP removal with affordable cost and minimal secondary pollution and suggests an appealing strategy based on self-propelled micro/nanorobots to sample and assess nanoplastics in aqueous environment.
非海水中的微/纳米塑料（MNP）污染已演变成对全球生态系统的一个显著的生态毒理学威胁。然而，现有的MNP去除策略通常局限于化学絮凝或物理过滤，这些方法往往无法去除超小尺寸或超低浓度的塑料颗粒污染物。在此，我们报道了一种由可磁化离子交换树脂球组成的自驱动磁控机器人，它可用于动态去除或分离非海水中的MNP。由于可回收离子交换树脂建立的远程电泳吸引力，该磁控机器人在100个处理周期内显示出>90%的可持续去除效率，且已验证其对不同塑料成分、尺寸和形状以及非海水样本具有广泛适用性。我们的工作可能有助于以经济实惠的成本和最小的二次污染实现工业规模的MNP去除，并提出了一种基于自行推进的微/纳米机器人在水环境中采样和评估纳米塑料的有吸引力的策略。
