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Journal articles

February 2020

An Asymmetric Iron‐Based Redox‐Active System for Electrochemical Separation of Ions in Aqueous Media

Kai‐Jher Tan, Xiao Su, T. Alan Hatton

Abstract

Electrochemically mediated redox‐active processes are gaining momentum as a promising liquid‐phase separation technology. Compared to conventional systems, they offer potential benefits, such as smaller energy footprints, nondestructive operation, reversibility, and tunability for specific analyte removal, with clear applications to societal and industrial challenges like water treatment and chemical synthesis. An asymmetric Faradaic cell heterogeneously functionalized with a metallopolymer at the anode and a hexacyanoferrate material at the cathode is presented for the first time. The redox‐active species’ iron centers enhance the electrosorption of heavy metal oxyanions with up to 98% removal in the ppb range, and offer tunable operating windows as low as ≈0.1 V at ≈1 A m −2 . By avoiding water splitting, the hexacyanoferrate cathode imparts additional advantages, namely a four‐fold reduction in adsorption energy requirements, full suppression of solution pH increase, and the ability to capture redox‐active catalytic anions such as polyoxometalates without altering their bulk oxidation state. This hybrid framework of a polymeric ferrocene anode and crystalline hexacyanoferrate cathode allows for simultaneous and synergistic uptake of anions and cations, respectively, creating a new asymmetric scheme for water‐based separations, with foreseeable future extension to fields such as ion‐sensing, energy storage, and electrocatalysis.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by ExxonMobil Corp. and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J‐WAFS) seed grant. K.‐J.T. holds a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) postgraduate doctoral scholarship (PGS D). This work made use of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) Shared Experimental Facilities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. DMR 1419807), the Center for Environmental Health Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health under core center Grant No. P30‐ES002109), the Institute for Solider Nanotechnologies (ISN) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as the Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) at Harvard University (supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 1541959). The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Yayuan Liu and Dr. Katherine Phillips for their help in performing and discussing XPS measurements. The authors would also like to thank Miao Wang for assistance with pH and XRD measurements, Eliza Khokhar and André Tschöpe for help with electrode fabrication, Liruonong Zhang for help with initial electrode development and testing, and Dr. Lev Bromberg for insightful discussions.

MITEI Author
Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering

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