Per- and polyfluoro alkyl substances (PFAS) contaminate groundwaters around the world and have harmful long-term health effects in humans. While there are solutions in place for anionic PFAS remediation, the few solutions that exist for zwitterionic PFAS suffer from slow kinetics and poor selectivity. To gain a better mechanistic understanding of adsorption processes and improve the performance of materials that adsorb zwitterionic and cationic PFAS, we turned to preparing crystalline and porous Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs) with zwitterionic chains in the pores that could serve as testbeds for adsorption studies. The synthesis and chemical and materials characterization of a series of zwitterionic COFs is presented, along with an investigation of the binding affinity of these zwitterionic COFs towards zwitterionic PFAS uptake from water.

Pore functionalization of COFs for PFAS removal

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ACS Fall 2022

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