Conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) are a unique class of materials that combine extended π-conjugation with a permanently microporous skeleton. Since their discovery in 2007, CMPs have become established as an important subclass of porous materials. A wide range of synthetic building blocks and network-forming reactions offers an enormous variety of CMPs with different properties and structures. This has allowed CMPs to be developed for gas adsorption and separations, chemical adsorption and encapsulation, heterogeneous catalysis, photoredox catalysis, light emittance, sensing, energy storage, biological applications, and solar fuels production. Here we review the progress of CMP research since its beginnings and offer an outlook for where these materials might be headed in the future. We also compare the prospect for CMPs against the growing range of conjugated crystalline covalent organic frameworks (COFs).

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Direct carbonisation of conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) yields porosity-engineered carbons, opening up a new source of electroactive materials.

Designable porous materials have potential in a plethora of applications, but synthesis costs and strict reaction conditions limit their true commercialization. Herein, we show that hypercrosslinked polymers (HCPs) can be synthesized within minutes in a green, low-cost, mechanochemical route which avoids the use of traditional toxic solvents. Microporous HCPs were obtained in as little as 10 s, with optimum surface areas up to 782 m2 g–1 obtained in only 5 min and in quantitative yields for both Friedel–Crafts “knitting” and Scholl-coupling (SC) reactions. Liquid-assisted grinding of the SC model system resulted in higher porosity than the traditional solution-synthesized equivalent. ssNMR studies showed that a higher degree of polymerization was obtained from mechanosynthesis with the presence of a trace green solvent as a porogen resulting in such high porosity. This method allows a near limitless variety of highly porous polymers to be synthesized from an aromatic molecule within minutes.

Industrial by-products sulfur and dicyclopentadiene form a high surface-area microporous carbon with excellent potential to filter gold or mercury.

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