Kui Tan
University of North Texas, TX·Chemistry
Groundwater often contains oxoanions, negatively charged ions made of oxygen bonded to another element, and these pollutants threaten human health. One way to remove them is adsorption: trapping the ions on the surfaces of porous materials.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
oxoanions
water pollution
groundwater contamination
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Separate the diffusion of oxoanion pollutants through metal-organic framework (MOF) pores from their binding at local sites, using in situ infrared spectroscopy in water combined with ab initio modeling.
- Identify how different oxoanions compete while diffusing through MOF channels and while occupying binding sites when several pollutants are present at once.
- Characterize molecular exchange and host–guest interactions, from van der Waals forces to hydrogen and covalent bonds, to explain why some porous materials remove oxoanions better than others.
More about the research
Real water usually contains several oxoanions at once, and they compete with one another, so it is hard to know why some materials clean water better than others. This project seeks to explain that behavior at the molecular level.
Why it matters
Oxoanion pollutants in groundwater threaten human health, and treatment materials often fail when several pollutants are present together. Understanding how these ions compete inside porous materials could help researchers design better adsorbents and water purification methods. That could benefit communities that depend on contaminated groundwater.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jian Liu
Rochester Institute of Technology, NY·Chemistry
Measure the adsorption and desorption thermodynamics and kinetics of polar and nonpolar molecules in hierarchically nanoporous metal-organic frameworks, and show that liquid-liquid interfaces form inside the pores.
Tendai Gadzikwa
Kansas State University, KS·Chemistry·Early-career
Determine the molecular origins of unexpected reactivity observed within and on multifunctional metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), porous crystals with several chemical groups placed close together, using machine learning.
Dianne Xiao
University of Washington, WA·Chemistry·Early-career
Develop a templating strategy to precisely position multiple metal centers and organic functional groups within metal–organic framework pores, giving uniform, tunable active sites on a solid support.
The school
University of North Texas: 4 labs on PI Pages, $124M a year on research, 283 research doctorates a year.
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