Harvesting Precious Metals and Removing Contaminants from Natural Waters-Can Neutrons Benefit Industrial Researchers in Japan?

摘要

Understanding material properties at a fundamental level is important to the development of the full potential of substances and the fruition of eventual industrial and commercial applications. The techniques of neutron-scattering provide unique capabilities in characterization of materials at nanometer scale thereby benefiting industrial research. We focus on a recent study of lithium extraction and arsenic removal from natural waters using nanostructured manganese-oxide based adsorbents. Neutron diffraction and spectroscopy, when combining with other characterization techniques and theoretical modeling, contributed to the understanding of the relation between adsorption behavior and material properties.