Antimony phosphate nanoribbons. Sorbents for uptake of uranyl ion

Antimony phosphate nanoribbons was synthesized and characterized using different techniques. Studies showed that the synthesized antimony phosphate possessed highly crystalline monoclinic SbPO4 phase with an average crystallite size of 14 nm. TEM studies showed that antimony phosphate was present both as nano ribbons and nano particles. It is observed that the nano ribbons have length in the range of 500-700 nm and width around 100-200 nm whereas the nanoparticles size in the range of 1-5 nm. The synthesized nano phosphate was studied for its efficiency as sorbent for uptake of various metal ions including uranyl ion. The results indicated that a clean separation of uranyl ion from its various binary mixtures could be achieved at optimized pH of 4.5 and equilibration period of 1 h using 0.1 g of the sorbent. (author)