Preparation of Crown Ether Pillared Zirconium Phosphonate and Selective Adsorption for Strontium

Separation of strontium isotope is an important and challenging work. Herein, a novel method was developed for preparing of acid-resistance crown ether pillared zirconium phosphonate (D-AM-ZrP) by a directly one step reacting 4-amino-benzo-18-crown-6 phosphonic acid with zirconium other than the conventional complicated intercalation methods. By suitable control of the ratio of phosphoric acid to phosphonic acid, the D-AM-ZrP sample with perfect flower-like and well-ordered interlayer structure was obtained. More importantly, D-AM-ZrP exhibited high adsorption capacity and excellent selectivity for extracting Sr2+ from complicated system including high concentrated HNO3 media and competing ions, and the maximum adsorption capacity for Sr2+ (136.42 mg·g-1) was better than that of pure α-ZrP (28.17 mg·g-1) at weak acidic media, which could mainly be attributed to the presence of the strong chemical interaction between the intercalated molecule and material, resulting in its excellent stability and abundant adso