High stretching tuned GO decorated non-shrinkable polyacrylic acid-based composite fiber and its excellent performance as a Fenton catalyst

AbstractMixed valent iron ions were used to create a flexible ionic crosslinking network through coordination, making PAA fiber highly stretchable, and the fiber was highly stretched to tear graphene oxide (GO) sheets into discontinuously-dispersed monolayer sheets. The monolayer sheets could construct many hydrogen bonds with PAA chains to serve as knots to hinder chain movement, controlling the shrinkage of stretched fiber. Co-solvent formamide could improve the heat resistance of PAA fiber through special calorific effect; thus the highly-stretched fiber could tolerate high temperature heat setting. Due to the advanced structure induced by stretching, internal force relaxation caused by heat setting, and the existence of knots, the resulting fiber possessed the features of high strength and no shrinkage. High strength made the fiber mechanically applicable, and the unshrinkability could help it to maintain large specific surface area and strong iron ions-immobilizing capability. As a result, the catalytic activity of non-shrinkable fiber was increased by 25% compared with that of shrinkable fiber for methylene blue (MB) decolorization, and iron ion loading ratio was increased by 174.5%; however, iron ion leaching ratio was decreased by 76.5%, which was conducive to reusability improvement. Thereby, the resulting fiber could be repeatedly used to decolorize MB.Keywords: Dye wastewater treatmentfenton catalytic composite fibermulticomponent assistancepolyacrylic acidwet spinning AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank the Analytical & Testing Center of Tiangong University for measurement work.Author contributionsJinghong Wang: Writing-original draft, Validation, Investigation, Data curation, Resources. Jiayi Liu: Investigation, Data curation. Zeyan Wang: Investigation, Data curation. Nana Huang: Investigation, Data curation. Jiao Han: Investigation, Data curation. Naiku Xu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing-original draft, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Jiahan Zhang: Investigation, Data curation. Xiangyuan Yan: Investigation, Data curation. Yaqi Li: Investigation, Data curation.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementThe authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.Additional informationFundingThis work was support by the National Nature Science Foundation of China [grant number 51103099], the Tianjin Municipal Natural Science Foundation [grant number 12JCQNJC01600], the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China [grant number 20111201120002], and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [grant numbers 2014M550143, 2015T80221].