Eutectic Molten Salt Synthesis of Highly Microporous Macrocyclic Porous Organic Polymers for CO2 Capture

The development of porous materials is of great interest for the capture of CO2 from various emission sources, which is essential to mitigate its detrimental environmental impact. In this direction, porous organic polymers (POPs) have emerged as prime candidates owing to their structural tunability, physiochemical stability and high surface areas. In an effort to transfer an intrinsic property of a cyclotetrabenzoin-derived macrocycle—its high CO2 affinity—into porous networks, herein we report the synthesis of three-dimensional (3D) macrocycle-based POPs through the polycondensation of an octaketone macrocycle with phenazine-2,3,7,8-tetraamine hydrochloride. This polycondensation was performed under ionothermal conditions, using an eutectic salt mixture in the temperature range of 200 to 300 oC. The resulting polymers, named 3D-mmPOPs, showed reaction temperature-dependent surface areas and gas uptake properties. 3D-mmPOP-250 synthesized at 250 °C exhibited a surface area of up to 752 m2 g−1 and high microporosity originating from the macrocyclic units, thus resulting in an excellent CO2 binding enthalpy of 40.6 kJ mol−1 and CO2 uptake capacities up to 3.51 mmol g−1 at 273 K, 1.1 bar