Researchers and scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DEO) Brookhaven National Laboratory have done research published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters on a catalyst that decomposes nerve agents, eliminating their harmful and lethal effects.
The lead author of the paper, Anatoly Frenkel, a physicist with a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University said that their study is part of an ongoing multi-agency effort to protect soldiers and civilians from chemical warfare agents (CWAs). The study requires the researchers to understand molecular interactions on a small scale and to develop unique characterization methods that are capable of observing those interactions. It is a very complex set of problems that also has a very immediate societal impact.
Then, the researchers tried to find the appropriate technique for their research. And since the CWA was first used in World War I, scientists have been testing multiple procedures of mitigating their toxic effects. One of the most common methods is filtration, using an absorbent material, like a sponge, that would prevent the chemicals from spreading.
Frenkel pointed out that the usefulness of the filtration method is limited since once a filter reaches its capacity it needs to be regenerated, removed, or replaced. He said that they believe that the better approach would be to decompose the CWA with a catalyst, making the chemical harmless while reusing the catalyst afterward.
When they intended to go further into this approach, the team focused on the decontamination of sarin, a nerve agent that prevents muscles from contracting and relaxing. Sarin inhibits an essential enzyme in the body that plays a critical role in transmitting neuronal signals to the muscles. In the event of any compromise in those signals, then, muscles remain in the contracted form which becomes fatal as an essential muscle like the heart is unable to move.
A Virginia Tech scientist, John Morris who assembled the research team, said that their focus is to develop smart air filters that destroy sarin before the molecules even reach an individual. New catalysts that actively decompose toxins in the air would be used to protect both soldiers and civilians from devastating effects of chemical warfare.
The investigators conducted x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) for the first study at Brookhaven, a research technique that uses ultrabright x-rays to measure the elemental composition of a sample.
Frenkel said that XPS is a technique that is sensitive to the kinetic energy of a photoelectron that is expelled from a material when it is hit by the ultrabright x-rays. To use this method, they observed a change in the charge state of the zirconium atom in the molecule which informs that it is the zirconium in the catalyst that reacts with the nerve agent.
The researcher will take the study further by building on their results to design and optimize catalysts with isolated zirconium sites, based on other porous materials that have enhanced the activity for decomposing CWAs.
