Tunable Surface Area, Porosity, and Function in Conjugated Microporous Polymers

Simple inorganic salts are used to tune N-containing conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) synthesized by Buchwald-Hartwig (BH) cross-coupling reactions. Poly(triphenylamine), PTPA, initially shows a broad distribution of micropores, mesopores, and macropores. However, the addition of inorganic salts affects all porous network properties significantly: the pore size distribution is narrowed to the microporous range only, mimicking COFs and MOFs; the BET surface area is radically improved from 58 m(2) g(-1) to 1152 m(2) g(-1); and variations of the anion and cation sizes are used to fine-tune the surface area of PTPA, with the surface area showing a gradual decrease with an increase in the ionic radius of salts. The effect of the salt on the physical properties of the polymer is attributed to adjusting and optimizing the Hansen solubility parameters (HSPs) of solvents for the growing polymer, and named the Beijing-Xi'an Jiaotong (BXJ) method.