This work describes advanced synthetic methodologies to afford nanoporous materials with selective uptake affinity towards carbon dioxide and large gas storage capacities. An increase in porosity and uptake capacity in azo-linked porous organic polymers (ALP) for carbon dioxide capture as well as increased thermal stability of these materials by the incorporation of a cyclic backbone will be discussed. Cyclic polymers show remarkably different behaviors than their linear counterparts, and are expected to provide a highly tunable system for removing impurities such as carbon dioxide from breathing air aboard space vessels. The tunability will be further enhanced by the construction of ALP-based molecular brush polymers, which behave significantly differently from linear polymer analogs, and allow for pre-established molecular design parameterization facilitated by the covalent connectivity combined with solution- and solid-state assembly processes. Cyclic brush polymers, achieved by ring-expansion metathesis polymerization (REMP), combined with highly dense networks of azo-linkages, recently shown to be efficacious for selective carbon dioxide uptake, are achieved by “grafting to” strategies. A simple, scalable synthesis of a cyclic brush polymer system with highly tunable porosity and surface morphology that can be utilized for selective capture of carbon dioxide will be outlined, as well as a better fundamental understanding of the physicochemical behaviors and functionalization potential of these systems with regard to their applications in space technology as lightweight, nanoporous materials.

Nanoporous cyclic brush polymers for selective carbon dioxide capture

251st National Meeting (2016)

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