Abstract
One of the promising applications of nanomaterials is to use them as catalysts and sorbents to remove toxic pollutants such as nitroaromatic compounds and heavy metal ions for environmental protection. This work reports the synthesis of Cu/CuO-deposited composite track-etched membranes through low-temperature annealing and their application in catalysis and sorption. The synthesized Cu/CuO/poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) composites presented efficient catalytic activity with high conversion yield in the reduction of nitro aryl compounds to their corresponding amino derivatives. It has been found that increasing the time of annealing raises the ratio of the copper(II) oxide (CuO) tenorite phase in the structure, which leads to a significant increase in the catalytic activity of the composites. The samples presented maximum catalytic activity after 5 h of annealing, where the ratio of CuO phase and the degree of crystallinity were 64.3% and 62.7%, respectively. The catalytic activity of pristine and annealed composites was tested in the reduction of 4-nitroaniline and was shown to remain practically unchanged for five consecutive test cycles. Composites annealed at 140 °C were also tested for their capacity to absorb arsenic(III) ions in cross-flow mode. It was observed that the sorption capacity of composite membranes increased by 48.7% compared to the pristine sample and reached its maximum after 10 h of annealing, then gradually decreased by 24% with further annealing.
Highlights
Nanostructured materials based on copper(II) oxide (CuO) have been extensively studied by scientists over the past decades in various fields of science and technology, including management of water and wastewater [1]
In the synthesis of Cu MTs, a poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) track-etched membranes (TeMs) template functionalized with Pd catalytic nuclei was immersed in a plating copper solution, rendering the process facile, cost-efficient, and scalable up to sample size of 10 × 15 cm
The thin layer of the Pd nuclei was used only once to initiate the plating, and was covered by the continuous building up of the electroless copper layer [30,44]. This technique does not require complex instrumentation and the deposition process is based on the autocatalytic reduction of Cu2+ ions inside the plating solution at the surface of the template [45,46]
Summary
Nanostructured materials based on copper(II) oxide (CuO) have been extensively studied by scientists over the past decades in various fields of science and technology, including management of water and wastewater [1]. The unique physical and chemical properties and high reactivity of nanoscale CuO structures (nanoparticles (NPs), nanowires (NWs), nanotubes (NTs), nanoflowers, nanopallets, etc.) offer possibilities for a wide range of applications [1]. CuO nanostructures (NSs) are actively used in nanosensors for detecting various species [2,3,4,5,6] They are used in the development of nanodevices for nanoelectronics [7,8]. They have antimicrobial properties against a wide range of pathogenic microorganisms [9], but their use in medical applications has been questioned due to their high toxicity [10,11]. One of the main applications of nanoscale structures of copper and its oxides is heterogeneous catalysis systems, and these NSs perform more efficiently compared to bulk analogs [12,13,14,15]
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