Interface-Engineered Materials for Selective Separation and Recovery of Critical Metals

Critical metals, including gallium, germanium, indium, lithium, rare earth elements, scandium, rhenium, and other strategic elements, are indispensable for semiconductors, renewable energy technologies, advanced manufacturing, and national security. However, their supply is often constrained by low natural abundance, highly dispersed occurrence, complex coexisting matrices, and increasingly strict environmental requirements. Secondary resources such as electronic waste, photovoltaic waste, coal-based solid wastes, metallurgical residues, spent catalysts, industrial wastewater, and saline brines provide important alternative sources. Nevertheless, efficient recovery from these resources remains challenging because target metals are usually present at low concentrations and coexist with abundant interfering ions with similar chemical properties.Interface-engineered materials provide a promising route to address these challenges by regulating ion recognition, selective coordination, interfacial transport, and dynamic separation processes at the molecular and nanoscale levels. Recent advances in functional adsorbents, ion-exchange resins, chelating polymers, hydrogels, membranes, MOFs, COFs, MXenes, graphene-based materials, metal oxides, bio-based materials, and hybrid composites have created new opportunities for critical metal separation. By tailoring active sites, surface charge, pore structure, hydration environment, ligand geometry, and confined nanochannels, these materials can achieve enhanced selectivity, faster mass transfer, improved stability, and better regeneration performance in complex solutions. In parallel, in situ spectroscopy, surface force measurements, computational chemistry, molecular dynamics, machine learning, and process modeling are offering deeper insights into interfacial recognition mechanisms and structure–performance relationships.This Research Topic aims to collect recent progress on interface-engineered materials and related mechanisms for the selective separation and recovery of critical metals. We welcome Original Research, Reviews, Mini Reviews, Perspectives, and Brief Research Reports covering, but not limited to: • functional adsorbents and ion-exchange resins for critical metal recovery; • membrane materials and nanoconfined channels for selective ion transport; • MOF-, COF-, MXene-, oxide-, carbon-, polymer-, and bio-based materials for metal separation; • molecular recognition and coordination mechanisms at solid–liquid interfaces; • selective separation of Ga, Ge, In, Li, Sc, REEs, Re, Se, and other critical metals from complex systems; • green leaching–separation coupling processes; • regeneration, cycling stability, and continuous separation; • computational and AI-assisted design of separation materials; • and process intensification for sustainable resource recovery. Contributions that bridge materials design, interfacial chemistry, separation performance, and practical resource recovery are particularly encouraged. Topic editors: Daoguang Teng, Ling Zhang, Fanfan Zhang, Wenshuai Yang, Jinhe Pan Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81792/interface-engineered-materials-for-selective-separation-and-recovery-of-critical-metals