Tetraphenylpyrene-bridged silsesquioxane-based fluorescent hybrid porous polymer with selective metal ions sensing and efficient phenolic pollutants adsorption activities

Abstract A silsesquioxane based fluorescent porous polymer (PCS-TPPy) was easily prepared by Friedel-Crafts reaction of tetraphenylpyrene (TPPy) with octavinylsilsesquioxane (OVS) using AlCl3 as catalyst. PCS-TPPy exhibited a high porosity with a Brunauer-Emmet-Teller surface area of 1236 m2 g-1 and total pore volume of 0.98 cm3 g-1. The excellent fluorescence of PCS-TPPy has enabled it to have sensitive and selective sensing capability for Ru3+ and Fe3+ with good linear response from 10 to 1000 μM and the corresponding detection limits are 3.12 μM and 6.78 μM, respectively. Moreover, high surface area, hierarchical microporous/mesoporous structure and conjugated structure of tetraphenylpyrene unit in this material favor phenolic pollutants adsorption with an excellent adsorption capacity of 1.53 mmol g−1 for 4-bromo-phenol (BP), 0.68 mmol g−1 for hydroquinone (HQ) and 0.50 mmol g−1 for phenol (PH), respectively. Importantly, PCS-TPPy exhibits an excellent regeneration performance.