Rationally designed nanotrap structures for efficient separation of rare earth elements over a single step.

ABSTRACT: Extracting rare earth elements (REEs) from wastewater is essential for the growth and an eco-friendly sustainable economy. However, it is a daunting challenge to separate individual rare earth elements by their subtle differences. To overcome this difficulty, we report a unique REE nanotrap that features dense uncoordinated carboxyl groups and triazole N atoms in a two-fold interpenetrated metal-organic framework (named NCU-1). Notably, the synergistic effect of suitable pore sizes and REE nanotraps in NCU-1 is highly responsive to the size variation of rare-earth ions and shows high selectivity toward light REE. As a proof of concept, Pr/Lu and Nd/Er are used as binary models, which give a high separation factor of SF_Pr/Lu = 796 and SF_Nd/Er = 273, demonstrating highl

SUBMITTER: Hu QH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10879098 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature