Separation processes are crucial for environmental remediation, water purification, or recycling of precious metals, but traditional processes can require vast amounts of energy or chemicals, and thus have a large carbon footprint. Electrochemical processes are a promising alternative to traditional separation technologies, due to its low chemical input, modularity, and easy integration with renewable energy sources. Ferrocene-containing redox-active polymers are an excellent platform for electrochemical separations due to their highly reversible electron-transfer process which can be used for anion capture and release. Furthermore, the ferrocene moieties offer a high tunability due to easy modification with a plethora of substituents. The ferrocene moiety itself can be leveraged for binding a target species, such as platinum group metal catalysts, through selective charge-transfer interactions. Another route towards tailoring selectivity is by combining different monomers in a copolymer. For example, methacrylic acid for cation binding is combined with ferrocenylpropyl methacrylamide to achieve efficient adsorption of rare earth elements by an ion-exchange mechanism and regeneration by inducing electrostatic repulsion of REE cations by oxidation to the ferrocenium cation. Furthermore, ferrocene-based water soluble redox-active species can be used to drive a redox-flow desalination process with much lower energy consumption compared to water splitting used in traditional electrodialysis.

Leveraging redox-active ferrocene-containing polymers for electrochemical separation processes

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