Development and application of label- free imaging to microplastic detection and characterisation in corals

每年产生数千吨塑料垃圾，其中大部分最终流入海洋。塑料碎片被分解，直到只剩下小颗粒，即所谓的微塑料。它们被生物膜包裹，或附着在其他颗粒上，或在海洋中漂浮时被微生物吸收，并被运送到海洋的各个地方。最近，全球对微塑料污染海洋和其他水生环境的认识有所提高。虽然傅里叶变换红外和拉曼光谱等光谱技术已广泛用于鉴定从水生环境中收集的塑料，但由于需要与其他有机和无机颗粒分离，过滤和较长的测量时间，这些技术非常耗时。此外，珊瑚等生物可能会吸收和摄入微塑料。人们对珊瑚中发现的微塑料的大小分布或性质知之甚少。在实验室里生长的珊瑚可以帮助我们理解这一点。野外收获的珊瑚可以潜在地指示微塑料吸收的时间尺度和季节变化。在这项工作中，将开发一种非接触快速识别微塑料悬浮液及其被珊瑚吸收的新方法。新方法基于拉曼光谱和非线性成像技术。这些数据将进一步与珊瑚的质谱成像相关联，以进一步了解微塑料的分布、形态和化学性质。

Thousands of tons of plastic waste are generated every year, and most of it ends up in the sea. Pieces of plastic get decomposed until only small particles, so called microplastics, are left. They get coated with biofilms, or attached to other particles, or ingested by microorganisms while floating in the ocean, and get transported to all parts of the oceans. The global awareness of pollution of marine and other aquatic environments by microplastics has risen recently. While spectroscopic techniques such as Fourier transformed infrared and Raman spectroscopy have been widely used for identification of plastics collected from aquatic environments, these are time-consuming due to the need for separation from other organic and inorganic particles, filtration, and long measurement time [2]. Furthermore, organisms such as corals can potentially uptake and ingest microplastics. Not much is known about the size distribution or the nature of microplastics found in corals. Corals grown in the lab can help understand this. Field harvested corals can potentially indicate the temporal scale and the seasonal variation the microplastic uptake. In this work, a novel method for non-contact fast identification of microplastics suspensions and their uptake by corals will be developed. The new method based on Raman spectroscopy and non-linear imaging techniques. The data will be further correlated with mass spectrometric imaging in corals to gain further insight on their distribution, morphology and chemical nature of microplastics.