Packed hybrid silica nanoparticles as sorbents with thermo-switchable surface chemistry and pore size for fast extraction of environmental pollutants

Sushilkumar A Jadhav; Roberto Nisticò; Giuliana Magnacca; Dominique Scalarone

doi:10.1039/c7ra11869d

Packed hybrid silica nanoparticles as sorbents with thermo-switchable surface chemistry and pore size for fast extraction of environmental pollutants

RSC Adv. 2018 Jan 3;8(3):1246-1254. doi: 10.1039/c7ra11869d. eCollection 2018 Jan 2.

Authors

Sushilkumar A Jadhav¹, Roberto Nisticò¹, Giuliana Magnacca¹, Dominique Scalarone¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry and NIS Research Centre, University of Torino 10125 Torino Italy dominique.scalarone@unito.it +39 011 6707855 +39 011 6707546.

Abstract

Thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-grafted silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) have been synthesized and fully characterized by ATR-FTIR, TGA, HRTEM, BET and DLS analysis. Hybrid solid phase extraction (SPE) beds with tuneable pore size and switchable surface chemistry were prepared by packing the polymer-grafted nanoparticles inside SPE cartridges. The cartridges were tested by checking the thermo-regulated elution of model compounds, namely methylene blue, caffeine and amoxicillin. Extraction of the analytes and regeneration of the interaction sites on the sorbent surface was carried out entirely in water solution by changing the external temperature below and above the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of the polymer. The results demonstrate that the elution of model compounds depends on the temperature-regulated size of the inter-particle voids and on the change of surface properties of the PNIPAM-grafted nanoparticles from hydrophilic to hydrophobic.