Developing and evaluating di(2-ethylhexyl) orthophosphoric acid (HDEHP) based polymer ligand film (PLF) for plutonium extraction

A method was developed to produce a thin Polymer Ligand Film (PLF) using di(2-ethylhexyl) orthophosphoric acid (HDEHP) ligand for rapid extraction of plutonium. Ligands were incorporated into a polystyrene matrix to generate a smooth and durable surface for analyte extraction. PLFs were prepared with varying amount of ligands to find the optimimum ratio between the ligands and polymer structure to give best plutonium recovery. Also, the plutonium extraction is dependent on the concentration of nitric solution. This dependency was examined in the manuscript. The PLF samples were counted directly using alpha spectroscopy without any further chemical process to test the plutonium recovery. The alpha spectroscopy data shows that HDEHP based PLFs were effective in extracting plutonium from nitric acid solution. The surface characterization was performed with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and digital autoradiography for defect examination of the PLF and plutonium distribution study, respectively.