Pyrene-functionalized silsesquioxane as fluorescent nanoporous material for antibiotics detection and removal

The synthesis of a hybrid nanoporous material is achieved by following Friedel-Crafts reaction between octavinylsilsesquioxane and pyrene using AlCl3 as the catalyst. The hybrid nanoporous material is characterized by IR, solid C-13 and Si-29 NMR. In addition, nitrogen adsorption/desorption measurement at 77K reveals that the hybrid nanoporous material possesses a high surface area of 1300 m(2) g(-1) and a bimodal pore distribution on the order of 1.41 and 4.15 nm, respectively. The macroscopic structure is amorphous under PXRD while FE-SEM and HR-TEM micrographs feature aggregates of nanosize particles. The efficacy of Py-HPP has been studied for the detection and removal of antibiotics, namely, berberine chloride hydrate (BCH), tetracycline hydrochloride (TH), and mafenide hydrochloride (MH) using fluorescence spectroscopy. The fluorescence quenching phenomenon of the primitive material (lambda(em) = 450 nm; lambda(ex)= 372 nm), upon interaction with the analytes separately, allows to delineate and compare the adsorption kinetics and adsorption capacity. The study reveals that Py-HPP possesses the highest and lowest adsorption capacity for BCH (330 mg/g) and MH (165 mg/g) while that of TH lies in the intermediate range (195 mg/g). The result suggests its potential for the remediation of antibiotic contaminants from water.