A crosslinking alkylation strategy to construct nitrogen-enriched tetraphenylmethane-based porous organic polymers as efficient carbon dioxide and iodine adsorbents

Abstract

Porous organic polymers (POPs) have received great attention worldwide and become attractive for capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) and radioactive iodine (129I or 131I). Here we present modified tetraphenylmethane (TPM)-based POPs i.e. mPTPMs (synthesized via Buchwald-Hartwig cross-coupling of a tetrakis(4-bromophenyl) methane core and selected aryl diamine linkers, followed by a crosslinking alkylation strategy using diiodomethane as a crosslinker). This new strategy offers mPTPMs with high surface areas up to 640 m2/g and uniform ultramicropore size of 0.6 nm, where porous properties are readily controlled by the substitutions of linkers and the crosslinker. Finally, as-synthesized mPTPMs exhibit good CO2 uptake capacities (0.106 g/g at 273 K and 1 bar) and high iodine uptake capacities up to 3.94 g/g within only 2.5 h, representing fast and efficient adsorbents for wider environmental applications.