Abstract
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•Revealing the interactions between triazinedithiol groups and heavy metal ions.•Triazinedithiol-functionalized materials are far superior to the traditional ones.•Triazinedithiol-functionalized adsorbent can highly remove Cd(II).•Triazinedithiol-functionalized support can highly disperse Ag, Pd, and Ni.•Triazinedithiolsilane could replace conventional mercapto silanes in the future.
Effective bonding interactions between various organo-functional groups and metals can contribute to novel materials or fancy performances. In order to reveal the superiority of triazinedithiolsilanes with di-sulfydryl groups over the conventional mercapto silanes with mono-sulfydryl, and amino silanes with mono-amine, for the first time, the above three silanes have been chemically anchored onto cutting-edge dendritic mesoporous silica nanospheres (DMSNs) for performance comparison. The three composite materials have been designed to serve as not only the adsorbents to remove heavy metal cadmium Cd(II), but also the catalyst-supports to load and disperse metal (noble metal Ag, Pd, and base metal Ni) nanoparticles (NPs). The abilities of triazinedithiol-functionalized DMSNs are far superior to the other two specimens both in Cd(II) capture and metal dispersion, owing to the specific nature of triazinedithiol group. The qe values of triazinedithiol-, mercapto-, and amino-functionalized DMSNs can reach to 1280, 816, 900 mg/g, respectively. Moreover, triazinedithiol-functionalized DMSNs could disperse metal NPs more uniformly that the conventional silane-modified ones. It is expected that triazinedithiolsilane compounds could faultlessly replace conventional mercapto silanes in some practical application fields and would shine brilliantly in the future.