Libraries of inherent optical properties (IOPs) of microplastics are sparse, yet they are essential for the development of optical techniques to detect and quantify microplastics in the ocean. In this study, we describe our results and technique for the measurement of the IOPs of microplastic suspensions generated from commonly utilized plastics. The measurements included angle‐resolved polarized light scattering, and spectral absorption and beam attenuation coefficients. We also performed ancillary characterization of particle properties, including size distribution, shape, and mass concentration of suspended matter. We observed several unique optical characteristics regarding absorption, scattering, and polarization properties compared with typical marine particle assemblages. We show that these results are useful for radiative transfer simulations as well as the potential development of novel plastic detection techniques from above‐ or in‐water optical measurements.

中文翻译：

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微塑料水悬浮液固有光学特性的测量

微塑料固有光学特性 (IOP) 的库很少，但它们对于开发检测和量化海洋中微塑料的光学技术至关重要。在这项研究中，我们描述了测量常用塑料产生的微塑料悬浮液的 IOP 的结果和技术。测量包括角度分辨偏振光散射、光谱吸收和光束衰减系数。我们还对颗粒特性进行了辅助表征，包括悬浮物的尺寸分布、形状和质量浓度。与典型的海洋颗粒组合相比，我们观察到了一些关于吸收、散射和偏振特性的独特光学特性。我们表明，这些结果对于辐射传输模拟以及基于水上或水下光学测量的新型塑料检测技术的潜在发展是有用的。