J Mater Chem 2012, 22:15599–15605.CrossRef 9. Ko SH, Lee D, Hotz N, Yeo J, Hong S, Nam KH, ABT-737 mw Grigoropoulos CP: Digital selective growth of ZnO nanowire arrays from inkjet-printed nanoparticle seeds on a flexible substrate. Langmuir 2012, 28:4787–4792.CrossRef 10. Greene LE, Law M, Goldberger J, Kim F, Johnson JC, Zhang Y, Saykally RJ, Yang P: Low-temperature wafer-scale production of ZnO nanowire. Angew Chem Int Ed 2003, 42:3031–3034.CrossRef 11. Law M, Greene LE, 4EGI-1 mw Johnson JC, Saykally R, Yang P: Nanowire dye-sensitized solar cells. Nat Mater 2005, 4:455–459.CrossRef 12. Ko SH, Chung J, Hotz N, Nam KH, Grigoropoulos

CP: Metal nanoparticle direct inkjet printing for low-temperature 3D micro metal structure fabrication. J Micromech Microengr 2010, 20:125010.CrossRef 13. Ko SH, Park

I, Pan H, Misra N, Rogers MS, Grigoropoulos CP, Pisano AP: ZnO nanowire network transistor fabrication on a polymer substrate by low-temperature, all-inorganic nanoparticle solution process. Appl Phys HCS assay Lett 2008, 92:154102.CrossRef 14. Yeo J, Hong S, Wanit M, Kang HW, Lee D, Grigoropoulos CP, Sung HJ, Ko SH: Rapid, one‒step, digital selective growth of ZnO nanowires on 3D structures using laser induced hydrothermal growth. Adv Funct Mater 2013, 23:3316–3323.CrossRef 15. Gao P, Brent JL, Buchine BA, Weinstraub B, Wang ZL, Lee JL: Bridged ZnO nanowires across trenched electrodes. Appl Phys Lett 2007, 91:142108.CrossRef 16. Park WI, Kim JS, Yi G, Bae MH, Lee HJ: Fabrication and electrical characteristics Methisazone of high-performance ZnO nanorod field-effect transistors. Appl Phys Lett 2004, 85:5052.CrossRef 17. Hong S, Yeo J, Manorotkul W, Kwon J, An G, Ko SH: Low-temperature rapid fabrication of ZnO nanowire UV sensor array by laser-induced local

hydrothermal growth. J Nanomater 2013, 2013:246328. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions SH, JK, HL, and JY carried out the experiments and drafted the manuscript. SSL and SHK supervised the project and participated in the design of the study and analysis of its results. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background Due to the development and expansion of industry, pollution of heavy metals in water supplies increases in the recent years. The pollution is seriously threatening the ecological systems as well as human health. Among them, mercury is one of the most hazardous elements due to its toxicological and biogeochemical behavior [1, 2]. A lot of adsorbents have been employed to extract Hg2+ from the industrial wastewaters. For example, thiol-functionalized adsorbents exhibited a specific binding capability toward highly toxic heavy metal ions including Hg2+ due to the existence of the thiol groups [3–6].