New material 'mines' copper from toxic wastewater

A team of scientists has designed a new material -- called ZIOS (zinc imidazole salicylaldoxime) -- that targets and traps copper ions from wastewater with unprecedented precision and speed. The technology offers the water industry and the research community the first blueprint for a water-remediation technology that scavenges heavy metal ions with a measure of control that far surpasses the current state of the art.