Microfluidic electrospray generation of porous magnetic Janus reduced graphene oxide/carbon composite microspheres for versatile adsorption

Hypothesis: Graphene-based microparticles materials are broadly utilized in all sorts of fields owing to their outstanding properties. Despite great progress, the present graphene microparticles still face challenges in the aspects of size uniformity, motion flexibility, and tailorable surface chemistry, which limit their application in some specific fields, such as versatile adsorption. Hence, the development of novel graphene microparticles with the aforementioned characteristics is urgently required.Experiments: We presented a simple microfluidic electrospray strategy to generate magnetic Janus reduced graphene oxide/carbon (rGO/C) composite microspheres with a variety of unique features. Specifically, the microfluidic electrospray method endowed the obtaiend microspheres with sufficient size uniformity as well as magnetic responsive motion ability. Additionally, magnetic-mediated surface assembly of phase transition lysozyme (PTL) nanofilm on the microspheres rendered the deposited area hydrophilic while non-deposited area hydrophobic.Findings: Such magnetic Janus rGO/C composite microspheres with regionalized wettability characteristics not only showed prominent performance in adsorbing organic liquids with high adsorption capacity and remarkable reusability but also displayed satisfying biocompatibility for the efficient uptake of bilirubin. More encouragingly, the microspheres could serve as adsorbents in a simulative hemoperfusion setup, which further demonstrated the clinical application potential of the magnetic Janus rGO/C microspheres. Thus, we anticipate that the obtained magnetic Janus rGO/C composite microspheres could show multifunctional properties toward water treatment and blood molecule cleaning. (c) 2022 Published by Elsevier Inc.

Automated summary

The study presented a microfluidic electrospray strategy to fabricate magnetic Janus reduced graphene oxide/carbon composite microspheres with unique features, including size uniformity and magnetic responsive motion. The microspheres also exhibited regionalized wettability characteristics through magnetic-mediated surface assembly of phase transition lysozyme nanofilm.