Large-capacity adsorption of the organic dye with surface-silanol-rich hybrid nano silica

Abstract

Surface-silanol-rich hybrid nano silica was synthesized with a reverse-phase microemulsion method. Exposure ratio of the surface silicon atom reached 81.4 % with the mildest drying method of air-drying at room temperature, which enabled a large amount of amino (5.8 mmol g−1) and silanol (8.0 mmol g−1) to be simultaneously generated on the surface. Abundant surface groups enabled the present material to efficiently remove various anionic dyes from the wastewater with a maximum adsorption capacity of 2048 mg g−1. The reported result supplied good reference for the designing of the adsorbent through modulating the surface groups’ composition and amount.