Creating electrochemical accessibility in covalent organic frameworks for uranium extraction via electrodeposition

The demand for mining metals via electrodeposition drives the need for high-performance electrodes. Traditional adsorbents are electrically insulating, limiting efficiency due to poor electrical contact. We overcome this by infiltrating conductive polymers into adsorbent pores, enhancing electrical connectivity and aligning chelators. This improves electrical pathways, enabling rapid nucleation and high space-time efficiency. Electrochemical uranium uptake from spiked seawater reaches 26.5 g uranium per gram of adsorbents, four times higher than electrodes mixing adsorbents with carbon black, and two orders of magnitude higher than physicochemical methods. The system also achieves uranium mining from natural seawater at 17.4 mg g-1 with an enrichment index of 1.1 × 10⁷. This strategy offers a blueprint for designing electrodes with better electronic access to active sites, boosting performance in electrically driven processes.