Lanthanide selective sorbents: self-assembled monolayers on mesoporous supports (SAMMS)

Through the marriage of mesoporous ceramics with self-assembled monolayer chemistry, the genesis of a powerful new class of environmental sorbent materials has been realized. By coating the mesoporous ceramic backbone with a monolayer terminated with a lanthanide-selective ligand, it is possible to couple high lanthanide binding affinity with the high loading capacity (resulting from the extremely high surface area of the support). This lanthanide-selective ligand field is created by pairing a "hard'' anionic Lewis base with a suitable synergistic ligand, in a favorable chelating geometry. Details of the synthesis, characterization, lanthanide binding studies, binding kinetics, competition experiments and sorbent regeneration studies are summarized.