Institute of Physical Metallurgy, Metal Forming and Nanotechnology, University of Miskolc, Miskolc-Egyetemváros, 3515, Hungary.
MTA-ME Materials Science Research Group, ELKH, Miskolc, 3515, Hungary.
Sci Rep. 2022 Feb 10;12(1):2292. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-06092-z.
Nanotechnology plays a vital role in all the scientific fields including environmental research due to their surface: volume ratio compared to bulk materials. Recent studies prove their effectiveness as pollutant removal and remediation practices. Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles a multifunctional material with distinct properties and their doped counterparts were widely being studied in different fields of science. However, its application in environmental waste treatment is starting to gain attention due to its low cost and high productivity. Heavy metal pollution is one of the major pollutants affecting aquatic and terrestrial life forms. Pollution in water bodies has also raised alarming concerns in the past decades. Most of the heavy metals are essential elements in trace amounts and omnipresent in the environment, causing toxicity for living organisms, for instance, nickel. In our work, we analysed the prospect of selective removal of nickel ions by different alkaline metals (K, Rb, and Cs) doped zinc oxide nanoparticles fabricated by different treatment methods (as-prepared and heat-treated). We found morphological variations from flower like to rod like owing to the alkaline cations of the dopants. In addition, the crystal structure and its different fractions presented amorphous content of the fabricated samples increased from 2 to 10 wt% with respect to the atomic radius of dopant in as-prepared samples and not present in heat-treated samples. We report, how the structure and the sample composition directly affected their adsorption behaviour towards Nickel ions in aqueous solutions based on the micro and nano zincite ratio of the ZnO particles.
纳米技术在包括环境研究在内的所有科学领域中都发挥着至关重要的作用，因为它们与块状材料相比具有更大的表面积与体积比。最近的研究证明了它们在去除和修复污染物方面的有效性。氧化锌 (ZnO) 纳米粒子是一种多功能材料，具有独特的性质，其掺杂的同类材料在不同的科学领域得到了广泛研究。然而，由于其低成本和高生产力，其在环境废物处理中的应用开始受到关注。重金属污染是影响水生和陆地生物的主要污染物之一。过去几十年来，水体污染也引起了人们的严重关注。大多数重金属是痕量的必需元素，在环境中无处不在，对生物体造成毒性，例如镍。在我们的工作中，我们分析了不同碱性金属 (K、Rb 和 Cs) 掺杂氧化锌纳米粒子通过不同处理方法（制备和热处理）选择性去除镍离子的前景。我们发现，由于掺杂剂的碱性阳离子，形貌从花状变为棒状。此外，晶体结构及其不同分数呈现出无定形含量，在制备样品中，随着掺杂原子半径的增加，无定形含量从 2 增加到 10 wt%，而在热处理样品中则不存在。我们报告了结构和样品组成如何直接影响它们在水溶液中对镍离子的吸附行为，这是基于 ZnO 颗粒中微锌和纳米锌的比例。
