Aminopolycarboxy acids (APAs) are well known for their ultrastong affinity for heavy metals. Their monolayer, full-coverage, robust and one-step decoration of the surface of a macroporous adsorbent has not yet been realized. In the current work, we derived a cost-effective strategy to produce a porous adsorbent with the aid of a dendritic macrosurfactant. Branched polyethylenimine (PEI) was partly alkylated with glycidyl cetylether (C16) to form a dendritic polyamine macrosurfactant (PEI@C16, M_n ∼ 10⁴). This macrosurfactant well stabilized a water-in-oil high internal phase emulsion (HIPE), while a macrosurfactant counterpart based on linear PEI did so poorly. Heating the HIPE system triggered a simultaneous transformation of the residual amines of PEI@C16 into APAs and of the oil phase (consisting of styrene, divinylbenzene and radical initiator) into an open-cellular solid matrix. The resulting open-cellular monolith showed a rather large specific surface area and very high affinity for various heavy metal ions in water. The adsorption of Pb(II) was indicated to follow a chemical and monolayer adsorption mechanism. The adsorbent showed good recyclability, due to the robustly anchored APAs.

中文翻译：

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大型表面活性剂介导的氨基聚羧酸修饰的开孔吸附剂，用于去除水中的金属微污染物

氨基聚羧酸（APA）以其对重金属的超强亲和力而闻名。尚未实现对大孔吸附剂表面的单层，全覆盖，坚固且一步式装饰。在当前的工作中，我们推导了一种具有成本效益的策略，借助树状大表面活性剂来生产多孔吸附剂。支化聚乙烯亚胺（PEI）中的溶液部分地与缩水甘油基十六烷基醚（C16）烷基化，以形成树枝状聚胺macrosurfactant（PEI @ C16，中号_Ñ〜10 ⁴）。这种大表面活性剂很好地稳定了油包水型高内相乳液（HIPE），而基于线性PEI的大表面活性剂却表现得很差。加热HIPE系统会触发PEI @ C16的残留胺同时转化为APA，而油相（由苯乙烯，二乙烯基苯和自由基引发剂组成）同时转化为开孔固体基质。所得的开孔整体结构显示出相当大的比表面积，并且对水中的各种重金属离子具有很高的亲和力。Pb（II）的吸附表明遵循化学和单层吸附机理。由于牢固地锚定了APA，因此吸附剂显示出良好的可回收性。