Precisely Identifying the Sources of Magnetic Particles by Hierarchical Classification-Aided Isotopic Fingerprinting

Magnetic particles (MPs), with magnetite (Fe₃O₄) and maghemite (γ-Fe₂O₃) as the most abundant species, are ubiquitously present in the natural environment. MPs are among the most applied engineered particles and can be produced incidentally by various human activities. Identification of the sources of MPs is crucial for their risk assessment and regulation, which, however, is still an unsolved problem. Here, we report a novel approach, hierarchical classification-aided stable isotopic fingerprinting, to address this problem. We found that naturally occurring, incidental, and engineered MPs have distinct Fe and O isotopic fingerprints due to significant Fe/O isotope fractionation during their generation processes, which enables the establishment of an Fe-O isotopic library covering complex sources. Furthermore, we developed a three-level machine learning model that not only can distinguish the sources of MPs with a high precision (94.3%) but also can identify the multiple species (Fe₃O₄ or γ-Fe₂O₃) and synthetic routes of engineered MPs with a precision of 81.6%. This work represents the first reliable strategy for the precise source tracing of particles with multiple species and complex sources.