Efficient removal of phosphate with La modified rGO/silica large-mesoporous films

Efficient incorporation of large-mesoporous silica materials with the film structure to fabricate hybrid film materials has been promising for water treatment. The modified large-mesoporous silica films possessed superior adsorbability, but the poor mechanical behavior hampered the application of adsorbents. We proposed the fabrication of La modified rGO/silica mesoporous films for efficient phosphate removal to deal with this problem. Consider the problem of plugging of mesopores, La/Si molar ratio of 1/10 was a conventionally reported loading ratio in the literatures. In this paper, the film materials also retained pore size (19.97 nm) comparable with that of the pristine large-mesoporous silica films (20.53 nm) when the La/Si molar ratio was 1/5. In the adsorption experiments, the maximum phosphate capacities achieved 55.045 mg g⁻¹. And multi-adsorption mechanisms were confirmed by the results of analysis. The formation of rod-like crystal LaPO₄ was the main pathway in the adsorption process. The film material might create a new way for phosphate removal.