Triazine-containing porous organic polymers from Diels-Alder reactions for efficient molecular adsorption and photocatalytic degradation

Abstract

As a reversible and simple synthetic strategy, Diels-Alder (DA) reactions were recently exploited for the construction of porous organic polymers (POPs) with diverse structures and functions, which hold the promise to synthesize functional POPs in large scale. However, these methods typically need high polymerization temperature, and the structural diversity is limited for their practical applications. In this work, a series of DA-POPs were successfully synthesized via the Diels-Alder reactions of furan- and alkynyl-functionalized monomers. To reduce the activation energy of the reaction, we introduced 1,3,5-triazine moiety to alkynyl-functionalized monomers, which substantially lowered the polymerization temperature to 120 °C. Leveraging the reported photoelectric activity from triazine moiety, we applied these POPs materials to the adsorption and photocatalytic degradation of the organic dye Rhodamine B, exhibiting remarkable adsorption and degradation ability. Photophysical tests further elucidated the degradation mechanism and corroborated the photocatalytic application potential of these DA-POPs. This work brings a new synthetic strategy for the elaboration of POPs for reducing environmental pollution via photocatalytic waste degradation.