LAUSR

Abstract A novel cobalt(II) ion-imprinted polymer (Co(II)-IIP) was synthesized and characterized by X-ray diffractometer (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectrum (FT-IR), Energy dispersion X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and N2 adsorption–desorption experiments. Batch experiments were conducted to evaluate its removal performance towards Co(II). The polymer exhibited an excellent adsorption ability on Co(II) with a saturation adsorption capacity of 175 mg g−1, which is almost the highest adsorption capacity of ion-imprinted adsorbents on cobalt(II) ion until now. Moreover, there is an encouraging selectivity to other coexisted heavy metal ions. In particular, the selectivity coefficient of Co(II)-IIP to Nickel (k(Co/Ni)Co(II)-IIP = 4.17) is far more than that of the non-ion imprinted polymer (NIP, k(Co/Ni)NIP = 0.74), which implies that the synthetic imprinted material is successful, and the cobalt(II) ions play the role of a template function. This work provides the first example of an ion-imprinted polymer induced by MOFs, which will introduce new opportunities to the functionalization of MOFs to remove heavy metal ions and radioactive nuclides.