Insect-Inspired Strategy for Conferring Reversible, High Responsivity on Microgels to Dilute-Source CO2

Huijuan Qiu; Jingyu Li; Mengjie Wang; Haojie Zhang; Jing Shen; Jianda Xie; Yusong Wang; Weitai Wu

doi:10.1021/acsmacrolett.3c00228

Insect-Inspired Strategy for Conferring Reversible, High Responsivity on Microgels to Dilute-Source CO₂

ACS Macro Lett. 2023 Jun 20;12(6):767-772. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.3c00228. Epub 2023 May 22.

Authors

Huijuan Qiu¹, Jingyu Li¹, Mengjie Wang¹, Haojie Zhang¹, Jing Shen², Jianda Xie³, Yusong Wang⁴, Weitai Wu¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, The Key Laboratory for Chemical Biology of Fujian Province, and Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian 361005, China.
² College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan 650092, China.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xiamen University of Technology, Xiamen, Fujian 361024, China.
⁴ Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.

PMID: 37212681
DOI: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.3c00228

Abstract

We described an insect-inspired strategy for conferring reversible, high responsivity on polymer microgels to dilute-source CO₂ (≤5000 ppm in gas mixtures). This is demonstrated on oligo(ethylene oxide)-based microgels that contain tertiary amines on the polymer chains with proper organic small molecular carbonates in the polymer-solvent system. Similar to the synergistic contribution of the CO₂ receptor subunits in mosquitoes for CO₂ response, laser light scattering and related studies indicated that the CO₂-response of the microgels in terms of the volume changes works through the coordination of different functional moieties in the system, making it different from the conventional CO₂-response mechanism. While this pushes the lower response threshold of CO₂ concentration down to ca. 1000 ppm, this unique strategy can also satisfy the urge to achieve both effective CO₂ capture and facile CO₂ release, making it possible to couple the detection with the capture and utilization of indoor excess CO₂.