Recent Advances in the Aggregation Behavior of Nanoplastics in Aquatic Systems

Funding Information: A. Cid-Samamed thanks for the action financed by the Spanish Ministry of Universities under application 33.50.460A.752 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR through a María Zambrano contract from the University of Vigo, belonging to the launch of a European Recovery Instrument (“Next Generation EU”), aimed at requalifying the Spanish university system, specifically for teachers and attracting international talent. This work is also financed by national funds from FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the project UIDB/04378/2020 of the Research Unit on Applied Molecular Biosciences-UCIBIO and the project LA/P/0140/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute for Health and Bioeconomy-i4HB. Funding for open access charge: University of Vigo/CISUG. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. ; This short review aims to critically discuss the recent advances in supramolecular chemistry to achieve the aggregation of nanoplastics in aquatic systems. Polymer modification provides a vital tool for designing novel and ad hoc synthesized surfactants with properties tuned for some specific applications (e.g., stimuli-responsive nanomaterial, conducting polymers), mainly to aggregate other polymers from the environment. Far from the typical use of surfactants, which ease the dispersion of insoluble molecules in water media or aid solubilization of insoluble molecules on local media, in this case, nanoarchitectonics serve researchers to design surfactants with a focus on the capture of nanoplastics from the environment. Additionally, monovalent and divalent salt additions aided NPs in coagulating in the aquatic systems. Finally, the latest research on NPs’ removal efficiency on wastewater treatment plant is reviewed to summarize the advances. ; publishersversion ; published