ABSTRACT
Microplastics adsorb toxic substances and act as a transport medium. When microplastics adsorbed with toxic substances accumulate in the body, the microplastics and the adsorbed toxic substances can cause serious diseases, such as cancer. This work aimed to develop a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) detection method for surface-adsorbent toxic substances by forming gold nanogaps on microplastics using surface acoustic waves (SAWs). Polystyrene microparticles (PSMPs; 1 µm) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), including pyrene, anthracene, and fluorene, were selected as microplastics and toxic substances, respectively. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs; 50 nm) were used as a SERS agent. The Raman characteristic peaks of the PAHs adsorbed on the surface of PSMPs were detected, and the SERS intensity and logarithm of the concentrations of pyrene, anthracene, and fluorene showed a linear relationship (R2 = 0.98), and the limits of detection were 95, 168, and 195 nM, respectively. Each PAH was detected on the surface of PSMPs, which were adsorbed with toxic substances in a mixture of three PAHs, indicating that the technique can be used to elucidate mixtures of toxic substances. The proposed SERS detection method based on SAWs could sense toxic substances that were surface-adsorbed on microplastics and can be utilized to monitor or track pollutants in aquatic environments.
ABSTRACT
Cryoablation is a surgical procedure used to freeze defective cells by inserting a low temperature probe into a human body to destroy malignant tissues. Miniaturized Joule-Thomson (J-T) refrigerators are often used to minimize the volume of the cooling device and reduce the destruction zone of normal tissue. The cooling effects of the existing probes are not uniformly generated along the longitudinal direction of the probe, which makes their applications less effective in surgeries of incompetent great saphenous veins (GSVs), where the target cells are distributed over a broad range. Long uniform refrigeration is required across the entire area of the probe to apply the same cooling effects. In this paper, a closed-loop J-T cryoablation probe was designed and fabricated to provide uniform refrigeration over a large area, with multiple expansion parts. Using flow boiling heat transfer, uniform cooling of a 200 mm-long and 0.3 mm thickness piece of target tissue was possible and simulated in a gelatin solution. The developed probe produced a greater than 53 K min(-1) cooling rate and the cooling temperature was below 253 K to satisfy the required cell death conditions.
