What can Blyholder teach us about PFAS degradation on metal surfaces?†

Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) molecules have long been used in a variety of applications as they are chemically robust and resistant to chemical transformations. However, it has recently come to light that these compounds are toxic, and remediation efforts are required to remove them from our society. In a recent study (Jenness et al., Env. Sci. Proc. Impacts, 2022, 24, 2085) we explored the use of silylium-carborane for the degradation of perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA) and three derivatives. In the course of our study, we found the degradation of the C–F bond was facilitated by a low-lying unoccupied anti-bonding orbital. Based on this finding, we propose the usage of metal catalysts for the degradation of the C–F bond as metals have been shown to take advantage of such low-lying anti-bonding orbitals. Utilizing density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we explored how the C–F bond in PFBA can be split by the entirety of the d-block metals. Deriving a series of linear scaling relationships, we demonstrate that metals conforming to the bcc point-group perform the best for this chemistry. In particular, iron (Fe) has a good balance of fluorine and PFBA binding and reaction energies and would be a worthy candidate for further studies.