Meso/Microporous Carbons from Conjugated Hyper-Crosslinked Polymers Based on Tetraphenylethene for High-Performance CO ₂ Capture and Supercapacitor

Abstract

In this study, we successfully synthesized two types of meso/microporous carbon materials through the carbonization and potassium hydroxide (KOH) activation for two different kinds of hyper-crosslinked polymers of TPE-CPOP1 and TPE-CPOP2, which were synthesized by using Friedel–Crafts reaction of tetraphenylethene (TPE) monomer with or without cyanuric chloride in the presence of AlCl ₃ as a catalyst. The resultant porous carbon materials exhibited the high specific area (up to 1100 m ² g ⁻¹), total pore volume, good thermal stability, and amorphous character based on thermogravimetric (TGA), N ₂ adsoprtion/desorption, and powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) analyses. The as-prepared TPE-CPOP1 after thermal treatment at 800 °C (TPE-CPOP1-800) displayed excellent CO ₂ uptake performance (1.74 mmol g ⁻¹ at 298 K and 3.19 mmol g ⁻¹ at 273 K). Furthermore, this material possesses a high specific capacitance of 453 F g ⁻¹ at 5 mV s ⁻¹ comparable to others porous carbon materials with excellent columbic efficiencies for 10,000 cycle at 20 A g ⁻¹.