Dimethyldichlorosilane
(DMDCS) driven silane coupling is enabled
by productive immobilization of an azo-dye to inorganic carrier through m-nitroaniline as a bridging component. The material has
been utilized for the selective sample cleanup of zinc(II), cadmium(II),
and mercury(II), respectively, extracted as [Zn5(OH)6(H2O)2]4+, [Cd4(OH)4(H2O)3]4+, and [Hg4(OH)3(H2O)2]5+. The corresponding luminescent nanomaterial was used for selective
detection of mercury(II) at trace level (LOD ≥ 0.04 ×
10–5 M) amid a matrix of possible interferences.
Breakthrough capacity (BTC) and preconcentration factor (PF) for the
respective metal ions (BTCZinc(II), 600; BTCCadmium(II), 460; BTCMercury(II), 540 μM g–1; and PFZinc(II), 197; PFCadmium(II), 148;
PFMercury(II), 145) were found to be excellent. Sequential
separation of zinc(II), cadmium(II), and mercury(II) was achieved
by employing selective eluents (mineral acids of very low concentration,
5 × 103 μM). BTC (530 ± 70 μM g–1) was found to be the product of the amount of extractor
frontier orbitals (132 μM g–1) and polynuclear
state of sorbed species, x (i.e., BTC = {amount of
HOMO}× x; x = 4 for cadmium(II),
mercury(II); and x = 5 for zinc(II)). Along with
these analytical qualities, ease of synthesis, high level of reusability
(≤2700 cycles @ 95% exchange capacity), and chemical stability
(post treatment BTC with 8 M HNO3, 8 M HCl, and 5 M H2SO4 was ≤95%) is an insignia of the material.