2026-07-15
Recently, Professor Wang Jianji and Associate Professor Li Zhiyong of the Green Chemistry Research Team, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Henan Normal University, in collaboration with Researcher Liu Yawei of the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have published a research paper entitled “Leveraging Photothermal Effect in 1D Covalent Organic Frameworks for Efficient, Rapid and Selective Gold Recovery” in Angewandte Chemie International Edition—a premier international journal in chemistry. Ma Jiawei, a doctoral student at Henan Normal University, is the first author of the paper. Associate Professor Li Zhiyong, Researcher Liu Yawei, and Professor Wang Jianji serve as co-corresponding authors. Henan Normal University is the first author’s affiliation.
The efficient recovery of gold from electronic waste is an important pathway toward sustainable resource recycling, however, simultaneously achieving high adsorption capacity, ultrafast adsorption kinetics, and excellent selectivity remains a major challenge in this field. To address this challenge, the research team innovatively proposed a strategy for efficient gold recovery leveraging the photothermal effect of one-dimensional covalent organic frameworks, and designed and synthesized two novel adsorbent materials, TN-COF and TC-COF. Under visible light irradiation, both adsorbents exhibited outstanding gold adsorption performance: a maximum adsorption capacity of up to 3,489 mg/g, and the ability to recover more than 99% of gold ions within 20 seconds. More significantly, the adsorbent materials were able to selectively recover approximately 99% of gold from waste CPU leachates containing as little as 17 ppm Au (III). This work fully harnesses the excellent photothermal conversion properties of the designed COFs, establishing a novel multi-field coupled adsorption mechanism of “multi-site adsorption—photoreduction—thermal promotion,” which drives the equilibrium shift of the gold adsorption-reduction reaction through the photothermal effect, successfully overcoming the limitations of conventional adsorption and achieving rapid, high-capacity, and highly selective gold recovery under visible light.
This achievement represents a further important advance by Henan Normal University in the fields of porous framework materials and precious metal resource recycling. It not only provides a new strategy for the green and efficient extraction of precious metals from electronic waste, but also opens up new avenues for the design of photothermal synergistic adsorption-separation systems, carrying significant scientific importance and broad application prospects. The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Henan Province Distinguished Youth Science Foundation, the Henan Province University Science and Technology Innovation Team, and other funding programs.
Paper link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.2904281
(Li Bin, Wang Manman, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering)
