Sulfur mustard gas,
also called HD, is one of the main chemical warfare agents and has
claimed thousands of lives and left many more contaminated. The development
of functional materials to promptly capture and detoxify sulfur mustard
within a few minutes is extremely important to save the lives of the
affected people. This has motivated us to explore excellent detoxification
systems that can be deployed in the field to rapidly capture and hydrolyze
mustard gas in a short time. To that end, we present a silver-ion-exchanged
zeolite Y [(Ag+)
n
@Y, n = 5, 13, 21, 32, 43, and 55] that can rapidly capture
mustard gas and its simulant (2-chloroethyl ethyl sulfide, CEES) in
ambient conditions to enable the prompt hydrolysis of the CEES captured
in its nanopores. The capture and hydrolysis ability of Ag+@Y positively correlated with its number of Ag+ ions.
In addition, 70% of CEES (2.5 μL in 1 mL) was captured by (Ag+)55@Y within 20 min at 25 °C in ambient conditions.
Moreover, 100% CEES (2.5 μL in 1 mL aqueous ethanol cosolvent)
was hydrolyzed in 1 min at 25 °C. The efficiency of Ag+@Y in capturing and hydrolyzing CEES as well as mustard gas is thus
a system with high detoxification efficiency for this dangerous chemical
warfare agent.