Selective scandium ion capture through coordination templating in a covalent organic framework

Ye Yuan; Yajie Yang; Katie R Meihaus; Shenli Zhang; Xin Ge; Wei Zhang; Roland Faller; Jeffrey R Long; Guangshan Zhu

doi:10.1038/s41557-023-01273-3

Selective scandium ion capture through coordination templating in a covalent organic framework

Nat Chem. 2023 Nov;15(11):1599-1606. doi: 10.1038/s41557-023-01273-3. Epub 2023 Jul 3.

Authors

Ye Yuan^#¹, Yajie Yang^#¹, Katie R Meihaus², Shenli Zhang³, Xin Ge⁴, Wei Zhang⁴, Roland Faller⁵, Jeffrey R Long^{6

7

8}, Guangshan Zhu⁹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Polyoxometalate and Reticular Material Chemistry of Ministry of Education, Faculty of Chemistry, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.
² Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
³ Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials MOE, and School of Materials Science & Engineering, and Electron Microscopy Center, and Jilin Provincial International Cooperation Key Laboratory of High-Efficiency Clean Energy Materials, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
⁵ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. jrlong@berkeley.edu.
⁷ Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. jrlong@berkeley.edu.
⁸ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. jrlong@berkeley.edu.
⁹ Key Laboratory of Polyoxometalate and Reticular Material Chemistry of Ministry of Education, Faculty of Chemistry, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China. Zhugs@nenu.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 37400595
DOI: 10.1038/s41557-023-01273-3

Abstract

The use of coordination complexes within covalent organic frameworks can significantly diversify the structures and properties of this class of materials. Here we combined coordination chemistry and reticular chemistry by preparing frameworks that consist of a ditopic (p-phenylenediamine) and mixed tritopic moieties-an organic ligand and a scandium coordination complex of similar sizes and geometries, both bearing terminal phenylamine groups. Changing the ratio of organic ligand to scandium complex enabled the preparation of a series of crystalline covalent organic frameworks with tunable levels of scandium incorporation. Removal of scandium from the material with the highest metal content subsequently resulted in a 'metal-imprinted' covalent organic framework that exhibits a high affinity and capacity for Sc³⁺ ions in acidic environments and in the presence of competing metal ions. In particular, the selectivity of this framework for Sc³⁺ over common impurity ions such as La³⁺ and Fe³⁺ surpasses that of existing scandium adsorbents.

Abstract

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