Effect of Hydrophobic Coating on Silica for Adsorption and Desorption of Chemical Warfare Agent Simulants Under Humid Condition

We prepared hydrophobic PDMS-coated porous silica as pre-concentration adsorbent for chemical warfare agents (CWAs). Since CWAs can be harmful to human even with a small amount, detecting low-concentration CWAs has been attracting attention in defense development. Porous silica is one of the promising candidates for CWAs pre-concentration adsorbent since it is thermally stable and its surface area is sufficiently high. A drawback of silica is that adsorption of CWAs can be significantly reduced due to competitive adsorption with water molecule in air since silica is quite hydrophilic. In order to solve this problem, hydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) thin film was deposited on silica. Adsorption and desorption of chemical warfare agent (CWA) simulants (Dimethylmethylphosphonate, DMMP and Dipropylene Glycol Methyl Ether, DPGEM) on bare and PDMS-coated silica were studied using temperature programed desorption (TPD) with and without co-exposing of water vapor. Without exposure of water vapor, desorbed amount of DMMP from PDMS-coated silica was twice larger than that from bare silica. When the samples were exposed to DMMP and water vapor at the same time, no DMMP was desorbed from bare silica due to competitive adsorption with water. On the other hand, desorbed DMMP was detected from PDMS-coated silica with reduced amount compared to that from the sample without water vapor exposure. Adsorption and desorption of DPGME with and without water vapor exposing was also investigated. In case of bare silica, all the adsorbed DPGME was decomposed during the heating process whereas molecular DPGME was observed on PDMS-coated silica. In summary, we showed that hydrophobic PDMS-coating can enhance the adsorption selectivity toward DMMP under humid condition and PDMS-coating also can have positive effect on molecular desorption of DPGME. Therefore we propose PDMS-coated silica could be an adequate adsorbent for CWAs pre-concentration under practical condition.