Naturally occurring gallic acid derived multifunctional porous polymers for highly efficient CO2 conversion and I2 capture

Assembly of naturally occurring building blocks into functional materials is of great importance. Herein, we utilized plant-derived polyphenols as building blocks to prepare porous organic polymers (POPs) with multifunctional sites, and a typical POP (denoted as GA-azo-POP) could be achieved from gallic acid through an azo-coupling strategy. As a superior support, GA-azo-POP supported Ag nanoparticles could efficiently catalyze the carboxylative cyclization of propargyl alcohols with CO2 with a very low usage of Ag (0.14 mol%). Meanwhile, the GA-azo-POP showed a high capacity for I2 adsorption (up to 287 mg g−1), which was higher than that of the reported solid materials at a similar I2 concentration. More interestingly, after adsorbing I2, the GA-azo-POP could efficiently catalyze the formation of cyclic carbonates from CO2. The excellent performance of the GA-azo-POP resulted from the co-existence of aromatic, azo, and phenolic OH functional groups and its porous structure.