Simple fabrication of zirconium and nitrogen co-doped ordered mesoporous carbon for enhanced adsorption performance towards polar pollutants.

Abstract

Ordered mesoporous carbons (OMCs) are a kind of remarkable adsorbents in environment area due to high surface area, controllable pore size and superior stability. However, the inherent hydrophobicity and strong π-π interaction make OMCs have an advantage for the adsorption of nonpolar pollutants, leading to great demands for the development of new-type OMCs with outstanding adsorption efficiencies towards polar pollutants. The zirconium and nitrogen co-doped ordered mesoporous carbon (Zr/N-OMC) was obtained by directly carbonizing the composites of phenolic resin and UiO-66-NH2, with uniform mesopore structure, large surface area (583\u202fm2\u202fg-1) and widely dispersed heteroatoms. Due to these prominent properties, the Zr/N-OMC was fabricated as high-performance solid phase microextraction coating. The results proved that the doping zirconium and nitrogen could act as active sites to interact with polar pollutants, resulting in fast adsorption rate and enhanced adsorption capacity. Therefore, the high-performance Zr/N-OMC-coated fiber was coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to establish sensitive analytical method for the detection of trace phenols from real water samples. This work would open up a new avenue for simple and efficient modification of OMC with enhanced adsorption performance to expand applications.