Toward Rational Design of PFAS-Extracting Deep Eutectic Solvents: Bifunctional Architectures, Leaching Constraints, and Scalability Targets

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) constitute a chemically diverse family of persistent contaminants, the regulation of which is tightening rapidly in Europe and the United States. Granular activated carbon, selective ion exchange, and pressure-driven membranes remove many long-chain PFASs, but their performance is less robust for short-chain and ultrashort species, and all generate concentrated secondary waste streams. Hydrophobic deep eutectic solvents (DESs), including natural deep eutectic solvents (NADESs), have emerged as tunable liquid extractants able to concentrate PFASs into small solvent volumes that can be regenerated or coupled to destruction. This perspective differs from existing DES-PFAS reviews by converting qualitative solvent-selection arguments into a decision framework with explicit acceptance gates: broad PFAS affinity, a component-resolved non-migration specification for treated water, viscosity and mass-transfer limits, regenerability targets, and techno-economic/life-cycle benchmarking against incumbent processes. We refine the bifunctional DES design hypothesis by separating validated regimes from unresolved cases, identifying the reliability limits of COSMO-RS, molecular dynamics, and machine-learning screening, and defining tiered reporting requirements for early-stage studies. The central message is that PFAS-extracting DES should no longer be evaluated only by single-compound removal percentages; they must be judged as integrated, closed-loop treatment materials with solvent losses, regeneration stability, destruction compatibility, cost, and environmental impacts that are quantified from the outset.