Abstract
Anthropogenic persistent organic pollutants pose a pressing threat to the environment and human health. They can be found in water bodies all around the world at low but hazardous concentrations. Typical representatives of this contaminant class are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Here, we present nanoparticulate core-shell water cleaning agents, which are able to remove PCBs of various chlorination degree from water. The core consists of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) providing large surface area that can be tuned via self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) composed of phosphonic acid derivates. This shell binds the pollutants non-covalently enabling facile magnetic water remediation. By employing positively charged or hydrophobic SAMs different PCBs can be preferentially removed. Furthermore, these orthogonal functionalities can be integrated in one SPION system. By combining charged and hydrophobic phosphonic acid derivates in so-called binary SAMs the removal preference can be convoluted, which works just as well in real river water. The cost-efficient availability of the base materials for these tailorable nanoparticles is complemented with recyclability laying the foundation for a sustainable water cleaning process.
Supplementary materials
Title
ESI_Tailorable nanoparticles for magnetic water cleaning of polychlorinated biphenyls
Description
The manuscript comes with supporting explanations and figures in the document “ESI_Tailorable nanoparticles for magnetic water cleaning of polychlorinated biphenyls”. There, details for the calculation of the electrostatic potential maps in Figure 1 are provided. The SPIONs are characterized, representative chromatograms of biphenyl and all PCBs as well as their calibrations are given. Furthermore, characterization as well as magnetic extraction results of recycled SPIONs can be found.
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