Temperature Activated Synthesis of Poly (m-phenylenediamine) Nano-particles and Study of their Sulfate Adsorption Performance

By : Benxiang Li, Dengyou Liu, Xiangyang Lu

Page No: 555-565

Abstract
Conventional chemically oxidative polymerization with gradually added oxidant procedure primarily produces the agglomerated products of poly(m-phenylenediamine)(PmPD) due to secondary growth. This research developed a simple route to improve the conventional polymerization by just adjusting temperature to synthesize poly(m-phenylenediamine) nano-particles without catalyst or template. Morphology, molecular structure and properties of the polymer were investigated. Results showed that temperature of synthesis has a significant influence in PmPD micromorphology. Higher temperature would potentially lead to PmPD nano-particles. The possible formation mechanism of nano-particles has been proposed. The obtained PmPD nano-particles with high thermal stability have larger specific surface area, as compared with the micro-particles obtained by conventional method. Moreover, poly(m-phenylenediamine) nano-particles exhibit a much stronger sulfate ions adsorption capacity (93.5 mg g-1) than the micro-particles (71.2 mg g-1), which is also apparently superior to the performance reported in previous literatures[23-30]

Authors :
Benxiang Li and Dengyou Liu : College of Science, Hunan Agricultural University , Changsha 410128, PR China
Xiangyang Lu : College of Bioscience and Biotechnology,Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha 410128, PR China.