A THREE-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHENE OXIDE NANOSTRUCTURE FOR FAST AND EFFICIENT DYE REMOVAL

摘要

Improvement of the decontamination efficiency for certain organic pollutants through eco-friendly adsorption techniques has become an important issue in the fields of environmentology [I]. Particularly, dyes and pigments, which are the main organic pollutant compounds from the dye manufacturing and textile branches, are difficult to be removed from contaminated water [2]. Recent studies have shown that individual graphene oxide sheets can be produced in a large scale by exfoliating from the cheap graphite, and their surface can be modified with organic and bio molecules through strong π-π stacking interaction and van der Waals forces [3]. The suspended graphene oxide solution can be reassembled to form a various dimensional structure and can play a role as a novel supporting platform for adsorbing a large quantity of inorganic, organic and biomolecules. Herein, we for the first time demonstrated the potential of graphene materials as environmental pollutant scavengers by utilizing the ultra-large surface area and strong π-π interaction on the surface. We generated novel three-dimensional (3D) graphene oxide sponge (GO sponge) from a GO suspension through a simple centrifugal vacuum evaporation method, and used them to remove both the methyl violet (MV) and methylene blue (MB) dyes.