The adsorption removal of heavy metal ions from aqueous solution using polymer nanocomposites has attracted great interest because of their advantages from both nanomaterials and polymers. In this work, a facile and novel method has been developed for surface modification of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT) with carboxymethyl chitosan via combination of mussel inspired chemistry and Michael addition reaction. To obtain resultant CNT based chitosan nanocomposites (CNT-PDA-CS), pristine CNT were first coated with polydopamine (PDA) thin films through self polymerization of dopamine under alkaline aqueous solution. Then PDA modified CNT were further functionalized with carboxymethyl chitosan (CS) via Michael addition reaction. The successful preparation of CNT-PDA-CS nanocomposites was ascertained by a series of characterization techniques including transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis and X-ray photoelectron spectrometry. The utilization of the resultant CNT-PDA-CS for removal of Cu 2+ from aqueous solution was also examined in this work. The results showed that CNT-PDA-CS exhibited obviously enhanced Cu 2+ removal capability as compared with the unmodified CNT. Considered the versatility of mussel inspired chemistry, the method described in this work should be a general route for fabricating highly efficient adsorbents, which should be of great interest for environmental applications.CNT-PDA-CS for Cu 2+ removal was examined. Because of the existence of functional groups such as carboxyl groups, amino groups and hydroxyl groups on the surface of CNT based nanocomposites, the CNT-PDA-CS exhibited obviously enhanced adsorption capability towards copper ions as compared with the unmodified CNT. Taken together, we have developed a novel, simple and universal strategy to prepare CNT based nano-adsorbents with high efficiency for removal of heavy metal ions from aqueous solution.These mussel inspired strategy should be a general method to fabricate various nanocomposites for environmental applications because of the universal and strong adhesion of PDA towards almost any materials and surface. [39,40] Scheme 1 the preparation of CNT-PDA-CS nanocomposites via a combination of mussel-inspired chemistry and a Michael addition reaction.
Experiment
Materials and characterizationDopamine hydrochloride was purchased from Sangon Biotech. Co., Ltd (Shanghai, China). CNT (> 95%, diameter of 30 to 50 nm) were purchased from Sino Nanotech Ltd. (Beijing, China). Tris (hydroxymethyl) aminomethane (Tris) and carboxylated chitosan are obtained from Aladdin Company (Shanghai China). All the other reagents are of analytical grade and used without further purification. Solution pH was monitored with a pH meter (Mettler-Toledo International Inc., China), fitted with a combined glass electrode (0.01 pH 2.4. Preparation of CNT-PDA-CS 200 mg of CNT-PDA was dispersed in Tris buffer solution (10 mM, pH = 8.5). 200 mg of chitosan was then added into the solution and stirred fo...