Preparation of Boronic Acid-Modified Graphene Aerogels and Their Selective Recognition Performance for Catechol in Mixed Phenolic Aerosol Environments

The uncontrolled discharge of phenolic pollutants into the environment and receiving water bodies poses a persistent threat to ecological and water quality, underscoring the need for effective pollutant sequestration prior to release rather than reliance on post-discharge remediation. Yet selective separation of target phenolic pollutants from complex mixed aerosol systems remains a critical challenge due to competitive adsorption among structurally analogous organic molecules. In this work, a three-dimensional boronic acid-modified graphene aerogel was fabricated via hydrothermal self-assembly using improved Hummers’ method-synthesized graphene oxide and benzene diboronic acid precursors. The modified material possesses a large specific surface area and hierarchical mesoporous structure, which effectively facilitates aerosol mass transfer and pollutant adsorption. Dynamic aerosol adsorption experiments based on standard international organization for standardization (ISO) puffing protocols verify the excellent catechol selectivity of the prepared aerogel. Compared with traditional cellulose acetate filter materials, the optimized composite filter achieves efficient catechol removal and effectively inhibits nonspecific adsorption of methoxy-substituted phenols. Combined with gas chromatography – mass spectrometry GC-MS detection and Density Functional Theory (DFT) theoretical simulations, the results reveal that the selective adsorption mechanism relies on cooperative hydrogen bonding to form stable pseudo-cyclic structures, rather than conventional boronate ester reactions. Charge density analysis further demonstrates that molecular recognition selectivity is dominated by configuration-dependent non-covalent interactions instead of simple adsorption energy differences. This study clarifies the selective adsorption principle of functionalized graphene aerogels in multicomponent aerosols and provides a novel structural design strategy for high-performance selective adsorbents for atmospheric phenolic pollutant purification.