https://www.cas.cn/syky/202507/t20250708_5075619.shtml
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09274-7
A team from the National Key Laboratory of Precision Intelligent Chemistry of the University of Science and Technology of China have made breakthrough progress in the preparation of deuterated chemicals. They propose a versatile platform that takes advantage of heavy water dissociation in bipolar membranes (BPMs) to produce deuterated acids and bases under particularly mild conditions. Specifically, D2SO4 (2.75 mol l−1) and KOD (5.82 mol l−1), which are comparable with commercial products, were prepared using inexpensive D2O and K2SO4. We find that the deuteron generation rate is approximately 1.25 times greater than that of the protons, which is attributed to less co-ion leakage of D+ than H+through the anion-exchange membrane (AEM), lower salt leakage within BPMs in D2O than in H2O and lower dehydration barrier of deuterons than proton clusters in the membrane phase.
Deuterated acids and deuterated bases are key raw materials for synthesizing deuterated drugs and conducting hydrogen/deuterium (H/D) exchange reactions, and have important application prospects in OLED and other luminescent materials.
This study uses cheap heavy water and inorganic salts as raw materials, and uses bipolar membrane electrodialysis technology at room temperature to directly and efficiently dissociate heavy water, generating high-concentration deuterated acids and deuterated bases in one step, which greatly reduces production costs and is expected to provide economical and high-quality deuterated acid and base raw materials for many downstream deuterated chemicals.
The researchers have achieved efficient preparation of a series of deuterated acids and bases such as deuterated sulfuric acid, deuterated hydrochloric acid, deuterium fluoride, deuterated nitric acid, potassium deuteride, and sodium deuteride.
