Abstract
One of the key shortcomings in the field of nanotechnology risk assessment is the lack of techniques capable of source tracing of nanoparticles (NPs). Silica is the most-produced engineered nanomaterial and also widely present in the natural environment in diverse forms. Here we show that inherent isotopic fingerprints offer a feasible approach to distinguish the sources of silica nanoparticles (SiO(2) NPs). We find that engineered SiO(2) NPs have distinct Si-O two-dimensional (2D) isotopic fingerprints from naturally occurring SiO(2) NPs, due probably to the Si and O isotope fractionation and use of isotopically different materials during the manufacturing process of engineered SiO(2) NPs. A machine learning model is developed to classify the engineered and natural SiO(2) NPs with a discrimination accuracy of 93.3%. Furthermore, the Si-O isotopic fingerprints are even able to partly identify the synthetic methods and manufacturers of engineered SiO(2) NPs.