Montmorillonite Supported Nano-Silica and Schiff Base Ligands Nanocomposite for Agricultural Antifungal Agent with Long-Term Sterilization Ability

Due to the large-scale use of pesticides and the splashing and drift of droplets, the utilization rate of pesticides is less than 1% which leads to pesticide residues, environmental pollution, and serious harm to human health. In this work, the carrier was prepared by a nano-silica pillared montmorillonite and modification of Schiff base through a hydrothermal method which was named as Zn2+-CH-SC. The structure and morphology of all clay samples was confirmed by TG, XRD, FTIR, TEM, XPS etc. Results showed that Zn2+-CH-SC had a high BET surface area (109 m2/g) and high drug loading rate (0.69 +/- 0.04%). Tri@Zn2+-CH-SC showed a good wettability that the contact angle was 69.30 +/- 0.09 degrees and adhesion on cucumber foliage. In the experiment of antifungal, Tri@Zn2+CH-SC showed a good and long-term antifungal in 100 days at a concentration of 0.1 mg/L. In biosafety assay, Tri@Zn2+-CH-SC had no obvious toxic on zebrafish but with a favorable effect on growth of seeds. To sum up, Tri@Zn2+-CH-SC was promising to be a good candidate for the efficient utilization of pesticides.