Investigation on Regulating Porous Polymers with Suitable Porosities and/or N-Doping for Enhanced CO2 Capture

Various cost-effective polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were used to fabricate hyper-cross-linked polymers (HCLPs) via an external cross-linker knitting method (ECLKM) followed by N-source impregnation modification. Multiple characterization techniques and thorough tests confirmed that the resultant thermally stable materials featured large specific surface areas (up to 2870 m2 g–1), narrow pore distributions (<0.70 nm), and high pore volumes (up to 1.09 cm3/g). Effects of porosities and N-doping modification ways on HCLPs’ CO2 capture capacities have been fully studied via controlling experiments. Remarkably, HCLP 1 prepared using naphthalene without further modification possessed the highest CO2 uptake capacity (up to 3.8 mmol g–1), indicating that porosities dominated the CO2 uptake process of HCLPs compared with N-doping modification. This study offers a facile strategy to construct HCLPs with great CO2 capture performances using PAHs via a simple one-pot ECLKM.