Preparation and application of Cyclodextrin-based nanosponges as sustainable sorbents

In recent years, research has rapidly turned to the development of new sorbent materials to improve and replace those already in use, offering alternatives that meet the sustainability criteria required by Green Chemistry. According to the principles of Green Analytical Chemistry (GAC) and Green Sample Preparation (GSP), the present research activity is focused on the synthesis, characterization and application of cyclodextrin-based sorbents, also known as "cyclodextrin-nanosponges" (CDNS). These promising materials with a mesoporous structure showed good selectivity towards target analytes, insolubility in aqueous media and good dispersibility. All these characteristics make them ideal candidates for obtaining highly performing sustainable sorbents to be used for solid-phase extractions, opening new perspectives for advanced analytical applications. This project explores the sorption properties of different nanosponges against more than one hundred environmental contaminants belonging to different chemical classes and characterized by different logP, pKa, and size. It aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the potential of CDNSs as sustainable sorbents, addressing the existing gap in the literature regarding their application in sample preparation. After a general introduction on CDs (Chapter 1) and a subsequent presentation of CDNSs (Chapter 2), the aim of the thesis is described (Chapter 3). The central chapters (Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7) will be dedicated to the description and discussion of the projects carried out during the three years of the PhD, while, in the final section, the obtained results will be summarized and future perspectives outlined.