Engineered material uses light to destroy PFAS, other contaminants [View all]

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://water.rice.edu/news/current-news/engineered-material-uses-light-destroy-pfas-other-contaminants

Dec. 16, 2025

Materials scientists at Rice University and collaborators have developed a material that uses light to break down a range of pollutants in water, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, the “forever chemicals” that have garnered attention for their pervasiveness.

The process involves the use of a class of materials known as covalent organic frameworks, or COFs, whose porous structure ⎯ and hence high surface area ⎯ make them useful in light-driven, or photocatalytic, reactions. When they interact with light, some of the electrons in COF molecules get displaced, forming holes, and this bifurcation of charges is what makes COFs good photocatalysts.

According to a study published in Materials Today, the Rice team grew a COF material directly onto a two-dimensional film of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), giving rise to a hybrid supercleansing surface that needs only light in order to cut through tough pollutants, including pharmaceutical waste, dyes and PFAS.

“By combining two safe, lightweight materials in a new way, we built a powerful pollution-fighting surface that works quickly, works on many different pollutants and does not rely on metals that could harm the environment,” said Yifan Zhu, a postdoctoral researcher in Rice’s Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering and a first author on the study. “This matters because it offers a cleaner, cheaper and more sustainable way to protect our water.”

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Yifan Zhu, Yuren Feng, Yunrui Yan, Zhiyu Wang, Xiang Zhang, Somayeh Faraji, Qing Ai, Tianyou Xie, Xintong Weng, Lixin Zhou, Tianshu Zhai, Yifeng Liu, Xiaochuan Huang, Chen-yang Lin, Sarah Glass, Bongki Shin, Yimo Han, Angel A Martí, Pulickel M Ajayan, Mingjie Liu, Qilin Li, Jun Lou, Covalent organic framework/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructure photocatalysts for efficient degradation of emerging contaminants, Materials Today, Volume 91, 2025, Pages 253-260, ISSN 1369-7021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mattod.2025.11.004