Polyacrylamide-phytic acid-polydopamine conducting porous hydrogel for rapid detection and removal of copper (II) ions

In this work, a conducting porous polymer hydrogel-based electrochemical sensor has been developed for rapid detection of copper (II) ions (Cu2+). The polymer (termed as PAAM/PA/PDA) hydrogel is prepared through multi-interactions of the monomers dopamine (DA), acrylamide (AAM) and phytic acid (PA) under mild ambient conditions: the AAM polymerizes through free-radical polymerization, DA occurs poly coupling reaction, and PA crosslinks polydopamine (PDA) and polyacrylamide (PAAM) by hydrogen bonds. The three dimensional (3D) network nanostructured PAAM/PA/PDA hydrogel not only provides a large surface area for increasing the amount of immobilized molecules/ions, but also exhibits a good conductivity. The PAAM/PA/PDA hydrogel-based electrochemical sensor exhibits a low detection limit (1 nmol L−1, S/N=3) and wide linear range (from 1 nmol L−1 to 1 µmol L−1) for Cu2+ detection in aqueous samples. Furthermore, the Cu2+ can be sensitively detected by the electrochemical sensor in different sample matrices, indicating that the electrochemical sensor could be used to monitor Cu2+ with reasonable assay performance in practical samples. The PAAM/PA/PDA hydrogel also exhibits a good capacity to remove Cu2+(231.36±4.70 mg g−1), which is superior to those of other adsorption materials reported in the literature. The facile synthesized PAAM/PA/PDA hydrogel provides a novel and regenerable platform for monitoring and removing Cu2+ in real samples.