Carbazole-bearing Porous Organic Polymers with mulberry-like Morphology for Efficient Iodine Capture

Three kinds of carbazole-based porous organic polymers were successfully prepared via simple Friedel-Crafts alkylation of 1,3,5-tri(9-carbazolyl)-benzene (TCB). External crosslinking agents named 1,4-bis(chloromethyl)-benzene, cyanuric chloride and 1,4-dimethoxybenzene were selected and the derived polymers (denoted as CSU-CPOPs-1, CSU-CPOPs-2 and CSU-CPOPs-3) gave high surface areas (up to 1032 m2/g) and good stability. Interestingly, varying the nature of “knitting” agents led to an unprecedented morphology evolution, and to note that a mulberry-like morphology was observed for the case of 1,4-bis(chloromethyl)-benzene. Taking advantage of the unique mulberry-like morphology as well as abundant porosity, CSU-CPOPs-1 showed ultrahigh iodine vapor adsorption performance with a capacity of 494 wt% at 348 K and 1 bar, which is the highest value reported to date for amorphous polymers. This study presented a feasible way to develop efficient iodine sorbents with tunable morphologies for addressing environmen...