The increment of environmental pollution from heavy metals released by industrial or urban sources drives the development of new smart adsorbents. In particular, copper pollution is a rising concern due to its presence in industrial streams and electronic wastes. Mesoporous silica is a useful adsorbent for copper uptake but it requires the incorporation of specific functionalities to enhance the uptake and selectivity. Branched polyethylenimine (PEI) is a specific copper chelate agent but its bulky structure hinders the loading on mesoporous supports. In this work, the incorporation of PEI on a hierarchical porous silica with wrinkled meso/macroporosity (w-SiO₂) resulted in a smart adsorbent with higher copper adsorption capacity. After the uptake, the annealing of the adsorbed PEI-copper complex leads to a w-SiO₂/CuO nanocomposite with outstanding antimicrobial properties and catalytic activity due to the enhanced copper bioavailability. The minimum inhibitory concentration of supported copper oxide on silica for E. coli in LB broth medium was 825.5 μg Cu/ml. Oxidation of the electron donor molecule ABTS in the presence of this nanocomposite and H₂O₂ is a first demonstrator of the potential application as a peroxidase-like nanozyme. The use of adsorbents with hierarchical porosity to support bulky functionalities with high selectivity is a novel strategy for heavy metals upcycling.

工业或城市源释放的重金属对环境的污染加剧，推动了新型智能吸附剂的发展。特别是，由于工业物流和电子废物中存在铜污染，铜污染日益受到关注。介孔二氧化硅是一种有用的铜吸收吸附剂，但它需要结合特定的功能来提高吸收和选择性。支化聚乙烯亚胺 (PEI) 是一种特殊的铜螯合剂，但其庞大的结构阻碍了在介孔载体上的负载。在这项工作中，将 PEI 掺入具有皱纹中孔/大孔 ( w -SiO ₂) 产生了一种具有更高铜吸附能力的智能吸附剂。吸收后，吸附的 PEI-铜复合物的退火导致w- SiO ₂ /CuO 纳米复合材料由于铜的生物利用度提高而具有出色的抗菌性能和催化活性。在 LB 肉汤培养基中，二氧化硅上负载的氧化铜对大肠杆菌的最小抑制浓度为 825.5 μg Cu/ml。在该纳米复合材料和 H ₂ O ₂存在下电子供体分子 ABTS 的氧化是作为过氧化物酶样纳米酶的潜在应用的第一个演示者。使用具有分级孔隙率的吸附剂以高选择性支持庞大的功能是重金属升级回收的新策略。