Recently, the team of Jianqiu Chen, Yinqiao Zhang, and Sijin Zuo from the College of Engineering published their latest research results Intrinsic Strain of Defect Sites Steering Chlorination Reaction for Water Purification in the journal Nature Communications, revealing that the intrinsic strain effect of defect sites guides the degradation of chlorinated drugs in water. Prof. Yinqiao Zhang, Associate Researcher of College of Engineering, and M.S. student Mohan Chen, Class of 2022, are the first authors of the paper, Prof. Jianqiu Chen and Associate Researcher Sijin Zuo are the corresponding authors, and China Pharmaceutical University is the first corresponding author of the paper.
New pollution residues such as drugs in water bodies have caused a global environmental pollution problem, which has attracted great attention from the state. In the non-homogeneous advanced oxidation technology, carbon nanotube (CNT) modification strategy helps to enhance the catalytic performance in the water body remediation process. Inspired by this, this study reveals for the first time the role of strain-deficient sites in regulating the chlorination reaction. It was found that the stretch-strain sp2 hybridized C-C bond defective sites showed stronger spin-lattice relaxation and adsorbed with free chlorine molecules via an initial Yeager-type adsorption, resulting in enhanced electronic interactions, which could significantly improve the precipitation and modulation of reactive species during the chlorination process. The experimental results show that the proportion of highly selective ClO- is enhanced from 38.8% in the conventional defect-based system to 87.5% dominated by strain, which effectively promotes the generation of innocuous intermediates as well as the deep mineralization of 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP). The results of this study reveal the critical role of strain effects in drug degradation in the water column.
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The above research work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, and the Young Science and Technology Talent Support Project of Jiangsu Provincial Association for Science and Technology.
Article link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57841-3
