NSF Award
2100797
In this Excellence in Research project, Professor Muhammad Islam of the Department of Chemistry, Physics and Atmospheric sciences at Jackson State University is developing new classes of two-dimensional (2D) material that exhibit intriguing adsorption and chemical exchange properties. The central goals of this project are to design, synthesize and functionalize a unique class of hybrid layered materials with an enhanced built-in property for the rapid, concurrent, highly efficient sequestration of a chemically distinct class of toxic metallic and non-metallic pollutants relevant to environmental remediation and wastewater treatment. The research activities of this project lie at the nexus of inorganic, materials and environmental chemistry. Thus, this project will serve as a multidisciplinary platform to educate the students in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. Developing scientific literacy and translation of science to a broader audience are also key to this research project. <br/><br/>This research is expected to expand our knowledge of layered materials design principles to enable the development of new classes of adsorbents for hard, borderline, and soft Lewis acidic heavy metal cations, and oxyanions. The proposed efforts could advance the chemistry of metal-polysulfides and metal-oxypolysulfides intercalated into hybrid single-phase 2D layer double hydroxides (LDHs) and could develop a correlation among their distinct chemical entities and their synergistic interactions with inorganic cationic and anionic species. This project will investigate the impacts of a number of factors on their adsorption behaviors. Such factors include metal sulfide ratios, valence states of the polysulfides, cation exchanged into the interlayered metal-polysulfide anions, chemically distinct oxides and sulfides in a single anionic moiety, 2D layered host LDHs with ion-exchangeable cations, different degrees of host-guest interactions, and variable inter-layered distances.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
