Recent progress of covalent organic frameworks in high selective separation of radionuclides

Abstract The utilization of nuclear energy power and nuclear weapon tests not only releases large amounts of radionuclides into environment, but also needs 235 U as nuclear fuel for nuclear energy generation. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have the advantages of tunable porous structures, adjustable active sites and enough special functional groups, which assure the high selective preconcentration of target radionuclides from complex solutions. In this perspective, the selective extraction of radionuclides (U(VI) as representative cationic ion, Tc(VII) as representative anionic ion, I 2 as gaseous nuclide and other nuclides) by COFs through sorption, and photocatalytic strategies are described, and the results show the high efficiency of COFs in target radionuclides removal. The perspective and challenges for the real applications of COFs in future are discussed in the end. Graphical Abstract