Project description
Synopsis: The accumulation of electronic waste and increasing demand for rare metals has stimulated the need to develop approaches that can recover precious metals, like gold, platinum, and palladium. This project aims to design porous materials that achieve rapid and selective capture of these precious metals while maintaining their structural integrity in water. Metal-organic Frameworks (MOFs) are an established class of ultra-porous solids that are made in one pot from organic bridging ligands and metal ions. Their tuneable pore sizes and tailorable composition make them promising candidates for a wide range of applications, including gas storage, catalysis, and sensing. Despite the many attractive features of this class of materials, the capture of metal-ions in aqueous media is a challenge, and necessities post-synthetic modifications to introduce strong absorption sites. Lining the internal surfaces of MOFs with polymers has been shown as a promising strategy to improve the % recovery and recovery rates of precious metals. Sulfur polymers show an excellent affinity for precious metals, but their incorporation into MOFs for precious metal recovery is an area that remains largely unexplored. Project aim: This project will focus on functionalising MOFs with high-content sulfur-based polymers to provide strong absorption sites for the binding of precious metals such as gold, platinum, and palladium. Metal recovery will be performed on wastewater and solutions derived from electronic waste.
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