Selective oxidation of organic pollutants based on reactive oxygen species and the molecular structure: Degradation behavior and mechanism analysis

The selective and rapid elimination of refractory organic pollutants from surface water is significant. However, the relationship of between reactive oxygen species (ROSs) and diversified pollutants molecular structures still needs to be further clarified. Here, we utilize polydopamine (PDA)-assisted coating strategy to prepare hollow 2D carbon nanosheet (ZPL-HCNS) and 2D Co3O4 nanosheet (ZPL-Co3O4) by thermolysis of PDA coated ZIF-L (ZIFL@PDA) precursor under different gas atmosphere, which realizes the controlled generation of radicals and nonradicals. Organic pollutants including bisphenols, sulfonamides, quinolones, tetracyclines, and azo dyes are applied to assess the catalytic performance. Results show that dyes containing azo structure are more likely to be degraded by radical process, which is due to that the energy (Delta E) requirements to break the azo bond is higher than energy released from singlet oxygen to oxygen molecule and lower than that of sulfate radical to sulfate. Frontier molecular orbital theory HOMO-LUMO and Fukui function expounded the possible selectivity mechanism. In addition, the degradation pathway and biotoxicity test are carried out. This work provides a reference to illustrate the selective degradation for ROSs and molecular structure of pollutants.

Automated summary

This study presents a method for the selective degradation of organic pollutants using a polydopamine-assisted coating strategy. The researchers synthesized new nanomaterials that showed selective degradation of certain pollutants, particularly those with azo structures.