A tightly-bonded and wettable self-detoxifying Zr(OH)4/fiber composite for decontamination of chemical warfare agent simulants

Abstract

Fibers that incorporated active catalysts have attracted increasing attention in the context of efficient personal protection and the safe handling of contaminated materials. It has proven challenging to develop self-detoxifying fiber composites that can simultaneously solve the problems of agglomeration and easy shedding. Here, we report an approach to the synthesis of a tightly-bonded Zr(OH)4/fiber composite by using glycerol as a chelating and dispersing agent. Zr(OH)4 can be evenly distributed across the fiber surface, effectively increasing the Zr(OH)4content in fiber composite materials and enhancing decontamination performance. Thus, more than 2-fold increase in adsorption ability was found for the activity of the Zr(OH)4 powder. The decontamination results demonstrated that the Zr(OH)4/fiber composite was able to degrade the surface contamination of chemical agent simulators and 12 h degradation efficiency for 2-chloroethyl ethyl sulfide(2-CEES) and dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) could reach 99.9% and 97.5%. In addition, Zr(OH)4 particles were firmly anchored onto the fiber surface with < 10% leaching after 10 min of sonication. Therefore, the designed Zr(OH)4/fiber composite will be a good potential application in chemical protective clothing while also showing great potential for application in areas that require highly wettable membrane materials.