Integrated sample processing and counting microfluidic device for microplastics analysis

Background The presence of microplastics is widespread in the ocean, freshwater, soil, or even in the human body. The current microplastics analysis method involves a relatively complicated sieving, digestion filtration, and manual counting process, which is both time-consuming and requires experienced operation personnel. Result This study proposed an integrated microfluidic approach for the quantification of microplastics from river water sediment and biosamples. The proposed two-layer PMMA-based microfluidic device is able to conduct the sample digestion, filtration and counting processes inside the microfluidic chip with the preprogrammed sequence. For demonstration, samples from river water sediment and fish gastrointestinal tract were analyzed, result indicate the proposed microfluidic device is able to perform the quantification of microplastics from river water and biosamples. Significance and novelty Compared with the conventional approach, the proposed microfluidic-based sample processing and quantification method for microplastics are simple, low-cost and with low demand for laboratory equipments, the self-contained system also has the application potential for the continuous on-site inspection of microplastics.