Exploring Natural Sea Egg Capsules Decorated with Polyphenol-Inspired Polymers as a Remediating Solution toward Pharmaceutical Pollutants

Biohybrid composites have emerged as highly effective and biocompatible materials of growing interest for applications in environmental remediation. In this work, the potential of porous collagen-/keratin-based capsules, which are naturally released by marine murex snails after their eggs hatch, was explored as an organic matrix for pollutant adsorption. In contrast to previous approaches, an all-in-water linker-mediated bis-condensation was performed directly on the egg capsules in order to synthesize a polyfunctional dendrimer version of polyphenol moieties, starting from gallic acid. The efficacy of this novel material to adsorb various organic pharmaceutical pollutants was evaluated by means of micro-Raman spectroscopy, micro-Fourier transform infrared (μFTIR) mapping, and ultraviolet (UV)–visible/fluorescence microscopy.