Novel electron-donating triphenylamine (TPA)-containing electroactive functional polyimides with electron-withdrawing pendant anthraquinone moiety were designed and prepared for memory devices, electrochromic and gas separation applications. These high-performance polymers exhibited two conductivity states and could be swept negatively with a high ON/OFF current ratio of 109. The ON state of OAQ-6FPI polyimide remained around 8 min after removing the applied voltage, while the AQ-6FPI polyimide quickly returned to the OFF state during the backward sweep in a dual sweep process, implying that devices based on OAQ-6FPI and AQ-6FPI reveal static random access memory (SRAM) and dynamic random access memory (DRAM) behaviors resulting from the isolated donor–acceptor (D–A) and non-isolated D–A structures, respectively. Meanwhile, the polymer films exhibited electrochromic characteristics with a color change from neutral colorless or pale yellowish to blue and green at applied potentials, ranging from 0.00 to 1.40 V. Furthermore, the presence of a bulky and carbonyl-containing anthraquinone unit could enhance effectively CO2 permeability coefficients (PCO2) and permeability selectivity (PCO2/PCH4) for these polyimide membranes in the range of 21.6–69.9 and 28.8–31.7, respectively, and permeability increased with higher efficiency by directly attaching the bulky group to the backbone than incorporating via a spacer.