The construction of bio-inspired hierarchically porous graphene aerogel for efficiently organic pollutants absorption

Three-dimensional graphene aerogel shows a wide application in many frontier domains, which have attracted extensive research interest owing to its large specific surface area and high porosity. However, it is still a great challenge to construct the ideal hierarchical pore structure while guaranteeing excellent absorption and mechanical performance. In this paper, inspired by the bio-based porous material, a hierarchical graphene aerogel with inter-connected micro-/nano-scale pore structure was constructed. The micro and nano-scale pores are generated by the bubble and nanoparticles (NPs) template, respectively. The resulting graphene aerogel (GA) presents low density, increased interfacial areas, high mechanical performance, and excellent absorption performance towards a mass of organic solvents. In combination with its high compressibility, a diverse organic solvent can be absorbed efficiently and recycled by extrusion conveniently. Besides, owing to the scattered hydrophilic sites of functional groups and NPs on the surface of GA-b/NP, it shows high adhesion properties for water droplets, thus presents great potential in high-efficiency fog collecting materials. In a word, the proposed approach presents a novel strategy for the construction of the hierarchical aerogel with light-weight and elasticity, as well as the achievement of efficient functionalization, which has great potential for the preparation of diverse functional composites.

Automated summary

This paper presents a novel hierarchical graphene aerogel with inter-connected micro-/nano-scale pore structure generated by a bubble and nanoparticles template, showing high absorption and mechanical performance. Due to its high compressibility and adhesion properties, it has great potential for efficient organic solvent recovery and fog water collection.