The Oliver group focuses on creating new cationic materials that will uptake EPA priority pollutants such as perchlorate and chromate. These materials release benign anions while soaking up heavy metals, which exist in water as their oxo-anions. The group has discovered a new class of extended inorganic and metal-organic hosts and investigates their anion exchange properties. The goal is the selective uptake of anions such as perchlorate, pertechnetate and chromate with high selectivity and potential reusability. Recent breakthroughs have led to materials that show record uptake in grams per grams for permanganate and perrhenate, studied as surrogates for the problematic pertechnetate. The materials outperform anion exchange resins and the cationic clay known as hydrotalcite by several-fold, even when non-toxic anions were added in over 100-fold excess concentration.
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