College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Collaborative Innovation Center of Functionalized Probes for Chemical Imaging in Universities of Shandong, Key Laboratory of Molecular and Nano Probes, Ministry of Education, Institute of Molecular and Nano Science, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, P. R. China.
Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA.
Nanoscale. 2020 Feb 27;12(8):5227-5232. doi: 10.1039/c9nr09813e.
The increasing extent of heavy metal pollution all over the world has resulted in many serious environmental and public health problems. To solve these problems, effective technologies for water treatment are urgently needed. Recent efforts have focused on the development of self-driven micro/nanomotors for eliminating inorganic and organic pollutants in an aqueous system. These synthetic micro/nanomotors can increase mass transfer through the transportation of reactive species, leading to higher decontamination rates. Here, we report a surface-tunable poly(amino acid) (PAA)-based micromotor. The property of the outer layer can be adjusted by changing the type and proportion of amino acids according to real requirements. Three kinds of micromotors are fabricated, which consist of a microtube composed of PAAs (i.e., polyaspartic acid (PAsp), polycysteine (PCys) or a copolymer of both (PAsp-Cys)), a thin Ni intermediate layer, and a Pt inner layer. Due to the presence of various side-chain functional groups (e.g., amino, carboxyl, and sulfhydryl) on the surface of the poly(amino acid)s, these micromotors can be used as effective scavengers for the removal of heavy metals (i.e., Cd2+, Pb2+ and methylmercury). Compared with PAsp and PCys micromotors, the PAsp-Cys micromotor shows good acid resistance and can simultaneously adsorb various kinds of heavy metals with high removal efficiency. The outer layer of the surface-tunable micromotor has good biocompatibility and adsorption efficiency, which holds considerable promise for environmental and biomedical applications.
重金属污染在全球范围内的不断加剧，导致了许多严重的环境和公共卫生问题。为了解决这些问题，迫切需要有效的水处理技术。最近的研究重点是开发自驱动的微/纳米马达，以去除水系统中的无机和有机污染物。这些合成的微/纳米马达可以通过输送反应性物质来增加传质，从而提高去污率。在这里，我们报告了一种基于聚氨基酸（PAA）的表面可调微马达。根据实际需要，可以通过改变氨基酸的类型和比例来调整外层的性能。我们制备了三种微马达，它们由 PAA（即聚天冬氨酸（PAsp）、聚半胱氨酸（PCys）或两者的共聚物（PAsp-Cys））组成的微管、薄的 Ni 中间层和 Pt 内层组成。由于聚氨基酸表面存在各种侧链官能团（如氨基、羧基和巯基），这些微马达可用作去除重金属（即 Cd2+、Pb2+和甲基汞）的有效清除剂。与 PAsp 和 PCys 微马达相比，PAsp-Cys 微马达具有良好的耐酸性，并且可以同时以高效率吸附各种重金属。表面可调微马达的外层具有良好的生物相容性和吸附效率，在环境和生物医学应用中具有广阔的前景。
