CTAB intercalation into two-dimensional transition-metal carbides: Enhancing adsorption performance of Cr (VI)

Nowadays, adsorption is the effective and widely used technology for removing toxic and harmful heavy metals from wastewater. As the most widely used star material in MXenes based materials, Ti3C2 exhibits great brilliance in the field of heavy metal adsorption. Due to the inefficient adsorption performance of Ti3C2 for Cr (VI), the intercalation method is used to treat Ti3C2 to obtain an efficient adsorbent. Therefore, 1CTAB-Ti3C2 material was constructed by intercalating Ti3C2 with Cetyl-trimethyl Ammonium Bromide (CTAB) and used to remove Cr (VI). The CTAB ultrasonic intercalation could make the positively charged CAT+ ionized from the solution attract to the negatively charged Ti3C2 surface through static electricity, and further insert between the negatively charged Ti3C2 layers. Therefore, the layer spacing of Ti3C2 became larger to improve its layer spacing, so that it exposed more adsorption sites and improved the adsorption performance of MXenes. The maximum adsorption capacity of 1CTAB-Ti3C2 for Cr (VI) was approximately 206.8 mg/g. The 1CTAB-Ti3C2 could absorb Cr (VI) at various temperatures and maintain a high adsorption efficiency. This study resoundingly prepared efficient adsorbents using a low-cost intercalation method, and it provided a new idea for the application of MXenes based materials in the field of heavy metal adsorption.