Due
to the highly acidic and high-salinity nature of the high-level
radioactive waste liquid (HLLW), selective extraction of TcO4
– from HLLW remains to be a challenging task. Traditional
anion exchangers show low selectivity and unsatisfactory extraction
performance due to the lack of functional groups that can interact
strongly with TcO4
–. In this work, a
tailor-made binding site was constructed by decorating two acetamide
functional groups on imidazolium cation to fabricate a new Tc separation
material, which exhibits high selectivity. Unlike most reported Tc
separation materials, which can only perform well under low acidic,
neutral, or alkaline conditions, this material still has good extraction
performance in highly acidic solutions. In the simulated high-level
waste liquid of 3 M nitric acid, the extraction efficiency of 0.5
mol/L organic phase for Tc can reach 96.5% through the first-stage
extraction. Our theoretical simulations suggest that ReO4
–/TcO4
– anions were
adsorbed on the top of the imidazolium ring during the extraction
process, with p−π and p–p interactions acting
as the driving forces.