Functionalized Porous Aromatic Framework for Efficient Uranium Adsorption from Aqueous Solutions

Baiyan Li; Qi Sun; Yiming Zhang; Carter W Abney; Briana Aguila; Wenbin Lin; Shengqian Ma

doi:10.1021/acsami.7b01711

Functionalized Porous Aromatic Framework for Efficient Uranium Adsorption from Aqueous Solutions

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2017 Apr 12;9(14):12511-12517. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b01711. Epub 2017 Mar 31.

Authors

Baiyan Li¹, Qi Sun¹, Yiming Zhang¹, Carter W Abney^{2

3}, Briana Aguila¹, Wenbin Lin², Shengqian Ma¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of South Florida , 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa, Florida 33620, United States.
² Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago , 929 East 57th St., Chicago, Illinois 60637, United States.
³ Chemical Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory , P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, United States.

PMID: 28350432
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b01711

Abstract

We demonstrate the successful functionalization of a porous aromatic framework for uranium extraction from water as exemplified by grafting PAF-1 with the uranyl chelating amidoxime group. The resultant amidoxime-functionalized PAF-1 (PAF-1-CH₂AO) exhibits a high uranium uptake capacity of over 300 mg g^-1 and effectively reduces the uranyl concentration from 4.1 ppm to less than 1.0 ppb in aqueous solutions within 90 min, well below the acceptable limit of 30 ppb set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The local coordination environment of uranium in PAF-1-CH₂AO is revealed by X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopic studies, which suggest the cooperative binding between UO₂²⁺ and adjacent amidoxime species.

Keywords: amidoxime chelating group; porous aromatic framework; postsynthetic modification; radionuclide migration; uranium adsorption.