Trends in polymers functionalized nanostructures for analysis of environmental pollutants

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teac.2020.e00084Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Polymers functionalized nanostructures have fueled the development of new generation of sensors.

  • The review introduces the development work in the area of polymers based sensors.

  • The review discusses the latest developments of these materials for various electrochemical sensing applications.

Abstract

Functional polymers have attached attention in recent years due to their wide applications and unique properties such as sound sensitivity, electrical, catalytic activity, etc for analysis pollutants. The synthesis of functionalized polymers can be affected by several factors, such as the polymerization process, the composition of polymers, and functionalization. However, the scaling-up process from laboratory to industrial is still limited due to its matrix process and steps. We have discussed: i) types of nanostructures and polymer functionalizations, ii) the analytical performance of the functionalized polymers for the analysis of pollutants like toxic gas, pesticide residues, heavy metal, and aromatic compounds, iii) the design and simple concept of the scaling-up process, iv) a parameter affecting the scaling-up process of the synthesis and application of the functionalized polymer nanostructures for the analysis of pollutants. This review will help industry experts and researchers with developing the analysis.

Introduction

For many years, rapid population, urbanization, and industrialization issues have caused the continuous degradation of environmental quality due to the high concentration of pollutants released. Some industries such as plastics, paper printing, leather, metallurgy, petrochemical, and manufacture release a high level of contaminants like toxic gases, heavy metal ions, hydrocarbon, and aromatic compounds [[1], [2], [3]]. Therefore, the monitoring of these pollutants is still of great importance to control the environmental quality. The functionalized polymer nanostructures in nanotechnology have become an exciting topic in various fields, and especially for the analysis of pollutants. Nanostructures provide good performance over their bulk structure because of their tunable physicochemical properties such as catalytic activity, high sensitivity, electrical and thermal conductivities, scattering properties, etc [4]. Wu et al. (2019) concluded that the critical factor for developing devices for the monitoring of pollutants is the property of sensitivity due to the fact that the pollutants in nature are mostly present in low concentrations [5]. In recent years, nanostructures have been developed for the monitoring of pollutants because of their functional groups. Nanostructures and nanomaterials have nanoscale dimensions between 1−100 nm and can be defined depending on their composition, size, shape, and origin [6,7]. Although the nanomaterial and nanostructure have abundant functional groups for binding analyte targets, the poor selectivity of nanomaterials becomes a limitation for the materials. Combination with organic molecules to produce the functional group polymers for highly binding analyte targets is the best method to produce highly selective materials [8].

Polymer functionalized nanostructures have more advantages in analytical applications due to their unique properties. The containment of specific chemical functional groups can lead to increased surface activity and reactivity, association, and phase separation [9,10]. The functionalized polymer contains the specific chemical groups which provide tailor-made and novel properties, as well as give advantages for several applications, especially for analytical measurement. Generally, the functionalized polymers include different structures and arrangements, such as functionalized polymer-based nanoparticles, functionalized polymer molecule conjugates, functionalized micelles, and self-assembled functionalized polymers [11]. The presence of abundant chemical groups in functional polymers can improve their reactivity, stability, and solubility. Several applications of the functionalized polymers have been reported for the analysis of pollutants such as metal ions [12], water purification [13,14], organic molecules [15], aromatic hydrocarbons [16] and others. Yusoff et al. (2017) synthesized Lanthanide-ion imprinted polymers (La-IIPs) via Schiff base polymerization for the selective removal of rare ion metals such as Pr, Sm, Nd, Gd, and Eu [17]. The functionalized polymers were synthesized by a batch system at a temperature of 60 °C for 48 h in magnetic stirring to complete thermal polymerization and resulted in good selectivity for adsorption and separation of the Lanthanide ion metals over the presence of other rare-earth ions. Although the functionalized polymers have shown excellent analytical performance, there are still technical gaps between industry and academic research for the production of functionalized polymers. Scaling up the process from lab to industry is still limited because it is a very complex process and it requires a fundamental understanding of fluidal mechanics, mass transfer, thermodynamics, and heat process transfer. In the industrial process, there are some essential requirements for material characteristics such as a simple and economical synthesis route, excellent hydrophilicity, high selectivity, and good chemical constancy [18]. Therefore, this review aims to describe a detailed synthesis of nanostructures, types of polymer functionalization, the application of functionalized polymers to analyze some pollutants that are commonly produced from industrial processes and a systematic scale-up approach based on design analysis. Furthermore, in the scale-up process, it is essential to keep some parameters constant such as reaction time, temperature process, the homogeneity of product, pressure, current density, and the chemical composition to complete the polymerization process.

Section snippets

Methods

Nanomaterials exhibit unique properties because of their particle size and nanostructure. In various applications, nanostructured materials are an important issue to discuss. Nanostructured materials can be designed by at least considering the method to prepare the nanomaterial, the precursor, and the condition of the synthesis system [19,20]. Nevertheless, two general methods can be classified to prepare different kinds of nanostructures (spherical nanoparticles, nano-hollow, nano-cubes,

Techniques involving nanostructures

The synthesis of functional polymers is an exciting topic to explore, especially for pollutant analysis as summarized in Table 1. Choi et al. (2018) reported ZnO/siloxane-based polymer nanostructures for the gas-phase detection of dimethylmethylphosphonate (DMMP) using a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) [55]. The presence of hydrophilic polymers such as siloxane or carboxilane could improve the binding target analyte through strong hydrogen bonding [56,57]. The result proved that the

From lab to industrial scale

Functionalized polymers have been primarily presented for many applications, especially for analysis pollutants as summarized in Table 1. Generally, the common thinking about the scale-up process is the need for further optimization and significant design facilities. The concept of improvement also applies to the other supporting materials used, such as raw materials, catalysts, additives, physical conditions, and others. Scaling-up a laboratory to an industrial-scale certainly requires proper

Conclusions and future prospects

In this paper, we have demonstrated that polymer functionalized nanostructures are a promising class of advanced materials for cost-effective, rapid, good selectivity, and effective analysis of some environmental pollutants such as heavy metals, hydrocarbon aromatics, organics molecules, and toxic gases [[104], [105], [106]]. Several researchers have reported that the activity of functionalized polymers depends on the specific surface area, numerous cavities sides [105], type of functional

Declaration of Competing Interest

There is no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the support provided by King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Saudi Arabia, Project No. DF181001.

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