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

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 m(2) g(-1)). The CO2 uptake and CO2/N-2 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/N-2 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. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.