This paper reports on a novel, film-forming acrylic polymer resin that exhibits low-gloss surface and high transparency via controlling film morphology at sub-micron roughness levels. Such microstructure is controlled by means of the copolymerization process increasing the allyl methacrylate (AMA) crosslinker content from 0 to 0.4 wt %. This acrylic resin makes it possible to avoid high loadings of matting agents, while also having good abrasion resistance and soft-touch feeling. Gloss levels of as low as 4 units at 60° incident angle and light transmittance of up to 85% have been achieved. The chemical structure of the aqueous acrylic resin was characterized by ATR-FTIR and NMR spectroscopy. The film morphology and surface roughness were measured by SEM and AFM analysis. The emulsion particle morphology and glass transition temperature were obtained by TEM and DSC, respectively. The effects of the crosslinker content on the light transmittance, glass transition temperature, and thermal degradation stability were also discussed in detail. The characterization results conclude that an acrylic polymer with interesting optical properties and high thermal stability can be obtained, which is desirable for leather applications.

In this work, an innovative nano-carbon material (N-CM) adsorbent was reported for exploring its adsorption behaviors toward cationic methylene blue (MB) and anionic reactive blue 19 (RB19) pollutants. The proposed N-CM was synthesized by a one-step solvothermal treatment of citric acid and zinc gluconate small precursors. N-CM consists of nanosheets that have an advantageous specific surface area, large sp²/sp³ hybridized domains, and abundant nitrogen/oxygen-containing surface functional groups. The synergistic effects of these features are conducive to the MB and RB19 adsorption. Different from anionic RB19 adsorption (79.54 mg/g) by the cooperative π-π stacking and hydrogen bonding, cationic MB adsorbed onto N-CM mainly by the electrostatic attraction at the natural pH solution (> pH_pzc), with an adsorption capacity up to 118.98 mg/g. Interestingly, both MB and RB19 adsorption conformed to the pseudo-second order kinetic (R² ≥ 0.995) and Langmuir isothermal (R² ≥ 0.990) models, accompanied by similar maximum monolayer adsorption capacities of 120.77 and 116.01 mg/g, respectively. Their adsorption processes exhibited spontaneously endothermic characteristics. Moreover, N-CM showed superior selective capability toward MB in different mixed dye systems, with high removal efficiencies of 73–89%. These results demonstrate that the high-performance carbon adsorbent prepared from small precursors via low-temperature carbonization shows great potentials in wastewater treatment.