VERSATILE SYNTHESIS OF HIGHLY POROUS DNA/CNT HYDROGEL FOR THE ADSORPTION OF CARCINOGEN PAH

DNA hydrogel offer great promise in environmental analysis and advanced water treatment, but structuring its framework for an improved property for the environmental application has not been explored. Herein a novel pathway has been described to shape DNA gel into a highly porous framework through Pickering emulsion templated method, using amine modified CNTs as emulsion stabilizer and continuously vibration to overcome the poor-stability of emulsion template. The as-prepared DNA/CNT hybrid gel displays a CNT-dependent tunable porous structure with improved thermal stability, swelling rate and capacity. It is shown that porous DNA/CNT hybrid gel features enhanced binding capacity for trace amount of PAH in comparison with the non-porous gel, probably due to more binding site can be provided by such a porous structure. Kinetics models fitting of the experimental data further suggests that adsorption reaction at the liquid/DNA gel interface is the rate-limiting step in the adsorption process. It is expected that the novel method is adaptable to other type of functional porous gel fabrication with Pickering emulsion of poor stability, and construction of functional DNA gel with fascinating structure and property for the environmental and biological applications.