EVALUATION AND INTEGRATION OF INERTIAL FOCUSING MICROFLUIDICS FOR MICROPLASTIC SIZE SEPARATION AND ANALYSIS BY LASER DIRECT INFRARED IMAGING

Candidate: William Chen
Supervisor: Dr. Darius Rackus and Dr. Roxana Suehring

Abstract:

Microplastic contamination is a pervasive environmental issue to the point where microplastics are now observed in human tissues. Understanding the size and composition of microplastics aids in determining their transport through the environment. Conventional approaches that rely on infrared and Raman spectroscopy for determining size and composition rely on manual labour and are very time consuming. Laser direct infrared (LDIR) spectroscopy imaging is a new spectroscopic tool capable of speeding up this process up by automated analysis. However, LDIR is currently incapable of analyzing particles smaller than 10 μm. To aid in determining the size and composition of small microplastics (<100 μm diameter), the use of microfluidic particle separators to separate and concentrate microplastics into a defined region for LDIR analysis is investigated. This thesis reports the optimization of an inertial focusing microfluidic device to separate microplastics, the integration of the device with LDIR, and a comparison of the microfluidic and conventional methods.