Heavy metal adsorbents formed by the grafting of a thiol functionality to mesoporous silica molecular sieves: factors affecting Hg(II) uptake

A grafting process has been found to be effective in producing sieves that bind quantitatively more heavy metal ions than standard techniques. The sieves were made using covalent grafting of 3-mercaptopropylsilyl groups MCM-41 and HMS to the framework pore walls. The functionalized HMS derivative has found to bind more mercury (II) ions than the initially anionic MCM-41 derivative.