Fabrication of Functional Carbon/Magnetic Nanocomposites as A Promising Model of Utilization of Used Crosslinked Polymers

The utilization of used crosslinked functional polymers (CFP) applied as sorbents or ion-exchangers is a great challenge arising from the need to protect the environment. In this paper we report a very promising way of obtaining carbon/magnetic composites based on metal (Co(2+); Ni(2+); Fe(3+)) derivatives of butadiene rubber-based phosphorus-containing polymer, which were treated as the model used CFP. We proposed a facile one-step thermal degradation approach to transform used CFP into carbon/magnetic composites (CMC). The obtained CMCs contained a mixture of metal phosphates and metal phosphides that exhibited strong magnetic properties due to the presence of nanosized metal derivatives with diameters of 100–140 nm. Structural and morphological changes of CFP and CMC after thermal degradation were investigated by the FTIR technique, X-ray Diffraction analysis, Scanning Electron Microscope, and Atomic Force Microscope–Magnetic Force Microscope. Moreover, thermal degradation kinetics parameters were determined to optimize the efficiency of the process.