Raman spectroscopy analysis of micro and nanoplastics
Supervisors: MERLEN Alexandre
Abstract:
The microplastics present in the western Mediterranean sea are directly related to the strong anthropogenic pressure on its coasts. Artificial land plastic wastes can be transported by precipitation into rivers and then discharged into the sea. Marine activities such as shipping and fishing also generate a lot of wastes from lost or abandoned equipments that contribute to this pollution. The thiner fragments can also be transported over very long distances by air and fall back to sea during precipitation.
The objective of the study is to identify the additives present in microplastics dispersed in the Mediterranean and to assess their rate of release into the environment over time. Their identification and quantification remain a technical challenge given their size and proportion in plastics. For this, Raman spectroscopy allows the identification of some of them, pigments in particular, and is considered as the most effective tool for the analysis of microplastics in marine environments, especially for the study of their aging. Finally, coupling with other techniques such as Tip Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (TERS) allows a shift from the micrometric to the nanometric scale on plastics analysis.
