Direct ink writing of MXene ink on polyimide substrate for the detection of microplastics

Around the world, microplastics (MPs) are an ongoing environmental problem that we have daily. There is an urgent need to mitigate and monitor MPs, a newly identified emerging pollutant. For many years, researchers have been closely working to overcome detection limitations and reduce the possibility of getting false positives or false negatives. This paper discusses the state of I-V sensing technology today and how it can be an inexpensive tool for new contaminant identification and characterization. MXene was prepared by removing the Al layer from Ti3AlC2 MAX phase was attained by the Etching method. The conductive MXene ink was prepared using a mixture of ethylene glycol, glycerol and ethanol. The infill solid pattern is printed using a direct ink writing printer. The optimized printed sample (Device 3) parameters like resistance, conductivity and sheet resistance are measured such as 72 Ω, 3.07 x 10-3 S/cm and 3.25 x102 Ω/sq, respectively. MXene ink shows a sensitivity of 11.442 μA mg/mL cm-2 with LOD and LOQ are 0.462 mg/mL and 1.54 mg/mL. The finding showed the high sensitivity of the approach and indicated that it might be used in the field of microplastic monitoring, with an emphasis on health management.