Detection of carbon dioxide with a novel HPTS/NiFe-LDH nanocomposite

Abstract Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is a major greenhouse gas, which is considered as a leading contributor to global warming and climate change. Therefore, the detection of CO 2 is highly important and beneficial for many applications. Layered double hydroxide (LDH) is considered as a good adsorbent for CO 2 with high adsorption selectivity and capacity. However, the adsorption capacities of CO 2 on LDH are usually investigated at high temperatures. And CO 2 adsorption is measured with bulky instrumentation, which exist the problems of high cost, long cycle, complicated test processes and unsuitability for real-time measurements of CO 2 gas. Herein, a new approach to rapid CO 2 detection is introduced using a novel HPTS/NiFe-LDH nanocomposite (8-hydroxypyrene-1,3,6-trisulfonicacid trisodium, HPTS) through a facile fluorescence technology at room temperature. In this paper, HPTS/NiFe-LDH nanocomposite was firstly synthesized through a facile one-step hydrothermal method. The HPTS/NiFe-LDH nanocomposite had no fluorescence with anionic dye HPTS intercalated into the cationic interlayer of NiFe-LDH. When CO 2 gas was gradually bubbled into the above system, CO 3 2− ions were then intercalated into the interlayer of NiFe-LDH and anionic dye was released from NiFe-LDH, thereby leading to the fluorescence recovery of HPTS. The results indicated that fluorescence intensity was linearly related to the bubbling volumes of CO 2 , suggesting that the HPTS/NiFe-LDH nanocomposite can be used as a sensor to selectively discriminate CO 2 gas, which provided not only a new route to rapidly detection of CO 2 but also a new application field of the hybrid LDH composites.