One-Step Synthesis of Solid-Liquid Composite Microsphere for CO2 Capture

The design and development of efficient adsorbents for CO2 capture is of paramount importance. Herein, we report a novel Pickering emulsion templating strategy to prepare a hierarchically structured, micrometer-sized solid-liquid composite microsphere (SLCM) for CO2 capture. This strategy enables us to introduce liquid amine into porous silica nanospheres which are encapsulated by the hydrophobic shell of micrometer-sized sphere through a one-step synthesis. The interior architectures, microsphere sizes, and anime loading can be facilely tuned through varying the synthesis conditions. The developed SLCM exhibits excellent CO2 adsorption capacity, fast adsorption kinetics, long-term recyclability, and reduced loss of amine in industrially preferred fixed-bed reactors. Interestingly, it was found that the adsorption behavior was dependent on the interior structure of SLCM. This study opens a new way to design efficient solid-liquid composite materials.