Rapid and reliable detection of nanoplastics and other analytes in complex biological and environmental media is very important for public health management and environment protection but there is still a lack of effective methods. Here, we report optoelectronic-tweezer-assisted nanograspers (OET-NGP), a reconfigurable trapping system that dynamically assembles metallic nanoparticles into light-programmable grasping structures. This approach enables not only rapid analyte enrichment but also the formation of highly uniform hotspots with improved Surface-Enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) reproducibility, achieving a detection limit as low as 4.43 × 10-8 M for Rhodamine B. More importantly, the OET-NGP platform enables in situ capture and SERS detection of nanoplastics at μg/mL level in both aqueous media and serum. These results highlight the capability and great promise of OET-NGP as a powerful sensing tool for effective nanoplastic detection with great potential for environmental monitoring and biosafety assessment.
Dong et al. (Wed,) studied this question.