Nanoporous triptycene based network polyamides (TBPs) for selective CO2 uptake

Abstract

In contemporary research, there has been a surge in the efforts to design novel porous materials as adsorbents for CO2 capture. Polyamides are a class of robust polymers that are easy to synthesize from readily available starting materials. These have CO2-philic amide functional groups and hence are being considered as materials for CO2 adsorption and storage. Herein, we report facile and efficient synthesis as well as characterization of a series of triptycene based polyamide networks (TBPs) that are thermally stable and they exhibit reasonably high surface area (SABET upto 80 m2 g-1). The CO2 uptake and CO2/N2 selectivity of these TBPs are noteworthy and these data are comparable to other literature reported polyamides known to demonstrate either highest uptake of carbon dioxide or highest CO2/N2 selectivity. In view of the ease of synthesis, thermal stability, porosity/surface area and CO2 selectivity, TBPs reported herein may be considered as promising adsorbent materials for CO2 contaminated gas purification processes.