Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Nanomaterials

Publication Date

4-1-2021

Abstract

This study focuses on the preparation of innovative nanocomposite materials based on surface modification of commercial nano-ZrO2 optimized from Bronsted acid-base surface reactions. This surface modification was carried out by direct grafting of suitable phosphonic acids bearing a vinylic or phenylic substituent in aqueous solution. Different loading quantities of the anchoring organophosphorus compounds were applied for each materials synthesis. The resulting nanohybrids were thoroughly characterized by infrared spectroscopy (DRIFT), solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), nitrogen adsorption-desorption (BET), thermogravimetric analysis (TG), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), demonstrating the reliability and efficient tunability of the surface functionalization based on the starting Zr/P ratio. Our nanocomposite materials exhibited a high specific surface area as well as complex porosity networks with well-defined meso-pore. The as-prepared materials were investigated for the adsorption of a mixture of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) at 200 ng center dot mL(-1) in an aqueous solution. Adsorption kinetics experiments of each individual material were carried out on the prepared PAHs standard solution for a contact time of up to 6 h. Pretreatments of the adsorption test samples were performed by solid-phase extraction (SPE), and the resulting samples were analyzed using an ultrasensitive GC-orbitrap-MS system. The pseudo-first-order and the pseudo-second-order models were used to determine the kinetic data. The adsorption kinetics were best described and fitted by the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The correlation between the nature of the substituent (vinylic or phenylic) and the parameters characterizing the adsorption process were found. In addition, an increase of PAHs adsorption rates with phosphonic acid loading was observed.

ISSN

2079-4991

Publisher

MDPI

Volume

11

Issue

4

Disciplines

Materials Science and Engineering

Keywords

ZrO2, nano-hybrids, adsorption, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, surface grafting, phosphonic acids

Scopus ID

85103838962

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Gold: This publication is openly available in an open access journal/series

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