  Increasing exposure to arsenic (As) contaminated ground water is a great
threat to humanity. Suitable technology for As immobilization and removal from
water, especially for As(III) than As(V), is not available yet. However, it is
known that As(III) is more toxic than As(V) and most groundwater aquifers,
particularly the Gangetic basin in India, is alarmingly contaminated with it.
In search of a viable solution here, we took a cue from the natural
mineralization of Tooeleite, a mineral containing Fe(III) and As(III)ions,
grown under acidic condition, in presence of SO42- ions. Complying to this
natural process, we could grow and separate Tooeleite-like templates from
Fe(III) and As(III) containing water at overall circumneutral pH and in absence
of SO42- ions by using highly polar Zn-only ends of wurtzite ZnS nanorods as
insoluble nano-acidic-surfaces. The central idea here is to exploit these
insoluble nano-acidic-surfaces (called as INAS in the manuscript) as nucleation
centres for Tooeleite growth while keeping the overall pH of the aqueous media
neutral. Therefore, we propose a novel method of artificial mineralization of
As(III) by mimicking a natural process at nanoscale.
