Abstract
This work focuses on the synthesis and characterization of new nanostructured materials that can be potentially proposed as alternatives in the field of nuclear decontamination. The first part is devoted to the state of the art on the use of inorganic materials for decontamination purposes, with the emphasis placed on their sorption capacity and selectivity. The layer materials are considered as offering potential for such applications. In consequence, the main efforts in this work have been focused on manganate and vanadate nanostructures.Solvothermal synthesis of these materials was developed on the basis of micro-wave oven procedures to control the materials structuring, thus leading to vanadate nanotubes and manganate nanoflowers. The optimization of vanadates was carried out by taking into account the effect of various factors (e.g., duration of maturation and heating stages, nature and mass of the template) on both the structural and textural properties of the resulting substrates. It was demonstrated that the scrolling of the layers was strongly influenced by the amount of amine and its chemical structure. Indeed, only the amine templates possessing long chains allowed homogeneous nanotubes to be achieved. More information about the structuring process was inferred when coupling experimental and simulation approaches.The sorption performance of the resulting solid materials in terms of sorption capacity and selectivity was assessed in model and simulated systems obtained by using either ultrapure or river water with an adequate composition as solvent to prepare aqueous solutions of strontium or/and cesium. The results of sorption experiments clearly indicated strong selectivity of the vanadate structures toward Cs+ and that of the manganate ones toward Sr2+, even under conditions of competition among various ionic species.Direct calorimetry measurements of heat effects accompanying sorption were correlated with the results of molecular simulation studies to shed more light on the origin of the improved sorption selectivity.