Study of microplastics as sorbents for rapid detection of multiple antibiotics in water based on SERS technology

Online monitoring of antibiotics in the environment attracts more and more attention. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a promising technique for the detection of trace amounts of antibiotics in the environment, which is fast, non-invasive and sensitive. To investigate the enrichment of trace amounts of antibiotics in water, polyethylene microplastics (PE MPs) were prepared as sorbents to simply concentrate enrofloxacin, ciprofloxacin hydrochloride monohydrate and triclosan in water, followed by the SERS measurement of antibiotics extract washed from MPs on an AgNPs@Si SERS substrate. Limit of detection of Rhodamine 6G is 2.1 × 10-12 M achieved from the AgNPs@Si SERS, indicating a high enhancement. The detection results show that SERS peaks of the antibiotics could be observed from the spectra of the extracts eluted from MPs, indicating MPs could adsorb and desorb antibiotics from water. Besides, for enrofloxacin and triclosan, the intensity of SERS measured from the MPs extracts are higher than that of directly from the spiked water, demonstrating the proposed method could lower the detectable concentration of hydrophobic antibiotics in water. Moreover, the proposed MPs sorbents combined with SERS method was applied to detect the antibiotics in real river water, with minimal detection of 10-10 M, 10-8 M, and 10-8 M achieved for enrofloxacin, ciprofloxacin hydrochloride monohydrate and triclosan, respectively. The proposed method provides a promising simple, rapid and low reagent consuming means for monitoring antibiotics in water.