Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs) are molecular Legos that allow the precise assembly of small organic building units into polymeric porous polycrystals via covalent bonds. With the abundant choice of molecular building units, the structural predictability and tunability created a plethora of COFs in the past decade, making COF a toolbox for function integration. Distinct from the conventional linear polymers, COFs possess higher dimensional network topologies, giving rise to tailor-made permanent porosity with uniform sizes, which is ideal for facilitating mass diffusion and permeation. However, due to the challenges in synthesis and processing, the research on COFs still mainly focuses on the fundamental chemistry and material science such as developing new COF structures and linkages, enhancing the crystallinity or improving the processability of COFs. Nevertheless, killer applications that are unique to COFs are much less explored. Considering the wide tunability of the organic backbone and the pore sizes, we envisage that COFs have great potential in energy and environment-related applications, where redox reactions occur in a heterogeneous system at liquid/solid or air/solid interfaces and requires a medium that facilitates mass diffusion of the redox species. In this talk, I will cover the following advances in COF research: 1) a facile, rapid and scalable approach for preparing high-quality COFs; 2) a supramolecular approach for COF processing and precise exfoliation into controlled layer thickness; 3) application of COFs in Li-CO2 batteries and all-solid-state Li organic batteries; 4) construction of redox-promoting COFs via chemically ambivalent linkages. In a nutshell, our research has addressed the synthetic and processing issues of a class of layered COFs, which are targeted for enabling new technologies in energy storage and environment such as Li-CO2 batteries, solid ion conductors and battery catalysts.

New opportunities of covalent organic frameworks for energy and environment-related applications

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.