Recent advances in the analysis of nanoscale materials using capillary electrophoresis

Kathryn R. Riley, Associate Professor, Swarthmore College

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a powerful instrumental separation technique that is often used for the analysis of small, charged molecules like proteins, peptides, DNA, and inorganic ions. This seminar will tell a decade-long story of how traditional CE methods have been advanced for the analysis of engineered and incidental nanomaterials, including noble metal nanoparticles, DNA origami, and nanoplastics. Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) refer to materials that are intentionally designed to have one nanoscale dimension. The unique properties of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) have enabled their increased use for a range of environmental, medicinal, and commercial applications, requiring sensitive analytical tools, like CE, to measure their properties and monitor their biological and environmental fate. Incidental nanomaterials refer to those that are unintentionally formed through degradation of macroscale properties. Of relevance to this talk, macroscale plastics that enter the environment through improper disposal of consumer products can undergo degradation to produce nanoplastics (<1 mm) and microplastics (1 mm - 5 mm). The small size of micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) gives rise to unique physicochemical properties that influence their environmental degradation, sedimentation, and chemical alteration. Thus, novel analytical methodologies, like CE, are needed to detect and quantify nanoplastics and their aggregation behaviors in the environment.