A versatile one-stone-two-birds strategy for facile fabrication of molecularly imprinted BiOBr composites: An efficient approach for selective removal of target contaminants from water

In this work, we presented a versatile “one-stone-two-birds” strategy to directly introduce the imprinted cavities into BiOBr/polydopamine composite (BD-MIP) for selective removal of target contaminants from water. BD-MIP exhibited a superior adsorption capacity which is 3.49-times higher than that of the non-imprinted composite, due to the imprinted cavities in polydopamine. BD-MIP showed an improved photogenerated carriers’ behavior, with a superior photodegradation rate of 96.6% in 30 min, excellent selectivity with coefficients above 2.53, and good reusability. All imprinted composites, including BD-MIPs for different templates and MIPs in different BiOBr-based composites, demonstrated greater degradation efficiency than their corresponding non-imprinted composites. This work suggests that the proposed strategy is versatile for selective removal of contaminants, offering flexibility with BiOBr/composites and confirming its potential as an intelligent, eco-friendly, and adjustable method for contaminant removal from water.