Efficient and Stable Extraction of Nano-Sized Plastic Particles Enabled by Bio-inspired Magnetic "Robots" in Water.

In this research, a rationally-designed strategy was employed to address the crucial issue of removing nano-plastics (NPs) from aquatic environments, which was based on fabricating sea urchin-like structures of FeO magnetic robots (MagRobots). Through imitating the sea urchin's telescopic tube foot movement and predation mechanism, the unique structures of the MagRobots were designed to adapt to the size and surface interactions of NPs, leading to a high efficiency of NPs removal (99%), as evidenced by the superior performance of 594.3 mg/g for the removal of polystyrene (PS) nanoparticles from water, with 3300% increase over magnetic FeO without structural design.

Coral-inspired environmental durability aerogels for micron-size plastic particles removal in the aquatic environment.

Removing microplastics (MPs) from water has been a huge challenge due to their inherent features including small size and high stability. In this research, inspired by the active adsorption and passive adhesion mechanisms of corals to MPs, a new strategy to fabricate polydopamine enhanced magnetic chitosan (PDA-MCS) aerogels was developed with a target to match the surface properties of MPs, achieving high MPs removal efficiency. PDA-MCS aerogels were highly efficient in adsorbing polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microplastics in water at pH values of 6-9, with a removal efficiency of up to 91.