Lamellar supramolecular materials based on a chelated metal complex for organic dye adsorption

Abstract

Poisonous industrial wastes have become the major threat to people's health. Recycling these components and making them into useful materials is needed urgently. We report that with the assistance of dodecylamine (DA), the chelating metal pollutant Cu-EDTA can be made into the lamellar Cu-EDTA@2DA supramolecular material. Since Cu-EDTA is notorious for its highly solubility and stability in water, this work for the first time showed that it can be made into supramolecular material which precipitated out from water. Furthermore, this Cu-EDTA@2DA supramolecular material shows excellent efficiency in adsorbing organic dyes, and can be recycled upon desorption of dyes in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF). As far as we know, this is the first case of using industrial waste to build well-defined useful supramolecular materials. We expect that the strategy of ‘fight poison with poison’ can be an effective and economic approach to treat environmental pollution.