“Baiting the hook”: Simple, powerful method for sulphur-functionalisation of carbon to enable selective capture of platinum-group metals.

Posted on Thursday 24 July 2025

Making use of safe and natural food additives extracted from seaweed, scientists from the Universities of York and Lincoln and from Johnson Matthey have invented a new method that uses cheap and sustainable materials to build sulfur-containing Starbon materials, S-Starbons.

In one case, the sulphur in the final S-Starbon material derives from the natural product itself. In the other case the sulphur is added during the fabrication process from an inorganic source.

These S-Starbons are useful because the sulphur atom acts as ‘bait’ to selectively bind platinum-group metals, extracting them from complex mixtures. This is important for enabling the recycling and reuse of these valuable and critical elements.  

This work has been published in the journal Carbon.