Design of amino terminated hyperbranched polymer modified SBA-15 as adsorbent for dyes

The aim of the present work is to investigate the potential of amino terminated hyperbranched polymer (HBP) modified mesoporous silica SBA-15 (HBP-SBA) as adsorbent for the removal of cationic and anionic dyes from aqueous media. The HBP-SBA adsorbent can be facilely synthesized through two steps: carboxyl functionalization of SBA-15 (obtaining CA-SBA) via one-pot co-condensation, and further graft of HBP onto CA-SBA. As an intermediate, CA-SBA contains abundant carboxyl groups with an uniform distribution, which not only form efficiently the chemical bond with amino group by grafting HBP, but also contribute to adsorption by providing active adsorption sites. The results demonstrate HBP-SBA adsorbent that contains nanonetwork with substantial adsorption sites is successfully fabricated, showing high adsorption capacity and quick adsorption rate for dyes. Compared with SBA-15 and CA-SBA, HBP-SBA gets better adsorption property, and the maximum adsorption capacities are 399.5 mg/g for cationic dye and 609.7 mg/g for anionic dye, respectively.