A Molecular Coordination Template Strategy for Designing Selective Porous Aromatic Framework Materials for Uranyl Capture

Ye Yuan; Qinghao Meng; Muhammad Faheem; Yajie Yang; Zhangnan Li; Zeyu Wang; Dan Deng; Fuxing Sun; Hongming He; Yihan Huang; Haoyan Sha; Guangshan Zhu

doi:10.1021/acscentsci.9b00494

A Molecular Coordination Template Strategy for Designing Selective Porous Aromatic Framework Materials for Uranyl Capture

ACS Cent Sci. 2019 Aug 28;5(8):1432-1439. doi: 10.1021/acscentsci.9b00494. Epub 2019 Jul 19.

Authors

Ye Yuan¹, Qinghao Meng¹, Muhammad Faheem¹, Yajie Yang¹, Zhangnan Li¹, Zeyu Wang¹, Dan Deng¹, Fuxing Sun², Hongming He³, Yihan Huang⁴, Haoyan Sha⁴, Guangshan Zhu¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Polyoxometalate Science of Ministry of Education, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, P. R. China.
² State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, P. R. China.
³ Key Laboratory of Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Functional Material, Chemistry, Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, P. R. China.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Davis, Davis, California 95616, United States.

Abstract

Uranium capture from seawater could solve increasing energy demand and enable a much needed relaxing from fossil fuels. Low concentration (∼3 ppb), competing cations (especially vanadium) and pH-dependent speciation prohibit highly efficient uranium uptake. Despite intensive research, selective extraction of uranyl ions over vanadyl units remains a tremendous challenge. Here, we adopted a molecular coordination template strategy to design a uranyl-specific bis-salicylaldoxime entity and decorated it into a highly porous aromatic framework (PAF-1) by programmable assembly. The superstructure (MISS-PAF-1) gives a strong affinity that removes 99.97% of uranium in 120 min. Notably, it binds to the uranyl ion at least 100 times more selectively than 14 different cations tested, including the vanadyl ion, in simulated seawater at ambient pH. Real seawater samples collected from the Bohai Sea achieve 5.79 mg g^-1 of uranium capacity over 56 days without PAF degradation, exceeding a 4-fold higher amount than commercial adsorbents.