Gold recovery from electronic waste could prevent excessive mining with toxic extractants and provide a sustainable path for recycling precious metals. Unfortunately, no viable recycling is practiced, except burning electronic circuit boards in underdeveloped countries, mainly because of the lack of chemical scavengers as adsorbents. Here, we report the synthesis of a family of porphyrin− phenazine-based polymers and their gold-capturing properties as well as application in gold recovery from actual e-waste. The polymers show high selectivity toward gold as well as other precious metals. The Au(III) adsorption isotherms were well-fitted to the Langmuir adsorption model and proportionality between porosity and uptake capacity was observed. Solution pH values and illumination conditions were shown to have influences on the performance of the adsorbents with the highest capacity of 1.354 g/g obtained in acidic pH and under continuous UV irradiation. Such a remarkable capacity of 7 times the theoretical estimate was achieved through photochemical adsorption−reduction mechanism supported by the observed suppressing effect of oxidant on gold-capturing ability. The adsorbents are robust and recyclable, a significant advantage over other emerging materials.

Nanoporous materials could offer sustainable solutions to gas capture and precious metal recovery from electronic waste. Despite this potential, few reports combine target functionalities with physical properties such as morphology control. Here, we report a nanoporous polymer with microspherical morphology that could selectively capture gold from a mixture of 15 common transition metals. When its nitriles are converted into amidoxime, the capacity increases more than 20-fold. Amidoximes are also very effective in CO 2 binding and show a record high CO 2 /CH 4 selectivity of 24 for potential use in natural gas sweetening. The polymer is successfully synthesized in 1 kg batches starting from sustainable inexpensive building blocks without the need for costly catalysts. Because the morphology is controlled from the beginning, the nanoporous materials studied in lab scale could easily be moved into respective industries.

A hypercrosslinked ultramicroporous and ordered organic polymer network was synthesized from a planar trimer indole building block called triazatruxene (TAT) through anhydrous FeCl3 catalyzed Friedel–Crafts alkylation using methylal as a crosslinker. The polymer network is stable in a variety of chemicals and thermally durable. The hypercrosslinked network TATHCP shows a high BET (Brunauer–Emmet–Teller) specific surface area of 997 m2 g–1 with CO2 uptake capacity of 12.55 wt % at 273 K, 1.1 bar. Gas selectivities of 38.4 for CO2/N2, 7.8 for CO2/CH4, 40.6 for CO2/O2, and 32.1 for CO2/CO were achieved through IAST calculation. The PXRD analysis has revealed that TATHCP has a fully eclipsed structure in full agreement with Pawley refinement. The ordered 2D layers provide anisotropy that could be used in catalysis and thermoelectric measurements. After loading with Pd­(II), TATHCP-Pd showed high catalytic activity in Suzuki–Miyaura cross coupling reaction with a wide range of reagents and excellent reaction yields of 90–98% with good recyclability. The structure of TATHCP-Pd was found to have two independent molecules of Pd­(OAc)2 in the asymmetric unit cell which are arranged between two TATHCP layers. Thermoelectric properties of TATHCP showed a high Seebeck coefficient and ZT, a first and promising example in HCPs with applications in all-organic thermal energy recovery devices.

Chemical tuning of nanoporous, solid sorbents for ideal CO binding requires unhindered amine functional groups on the pore walls. Although common for soluble organics, post-synthetic reduction of nitriles in porous networks often fails due to insufficient and irreversible metal hydride penetration. In this study, a nanoporous network with pendant nitrile groups, microsphere morphology was synthesized in large scale. The hollow microspheres were easily decorated with primary amines through in situ reduction by widely available boranes. The CO capture capacity of the modified sorbent was increased to up to four times that of the starting nanoporous network with a high heat of adsorption (98 kJ mol ). The surface area can be easily tuned between 1 and 354 m g . The average particle size (ca. 50 μm) is also quite suitable for CO capture applications, such as those with fluidized beds requiring spheres of micron sizes.

A new, high surface area, nanoporous polymer (COP-220) was synthesized using sustainable building blocks, namely, a food coloring dye (erythrosine B) and a commercial alkyne. During the Sonogashira coupling, it is observed that Pd and Cu ions and triphenylphosphine ligands of the catalyst get trapped inside the pores. The remnant synthesis catalyst components were characterized in detail and were tested as a new catalyst for Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reactions. COP-220 showed conversion yields comparable to the commercial homogeneous catalyst Pd­(PPh3)2Cl2 with an additional advantage of size-dependent catalytic activity when bulkier substrates were used. COP-220 was highly stable under thermal and chemical treatments and recyclable with no loss of activity. These findings show a clear need for extensive characterization of nanoporous polymers made through cross-coupling reactions and the potential of the trapped catalysts for new catalytic activity without additional loading.

Ordered mesoporous carbon materials offer robust network of organized pores for energy storage and catalysis applications, but suffer from time‐consuming and intricate preparations hindering their widespread use. Here we report a new and rapid synthetic route for a N‐doped ordered mesoporous carbon structure through a preferential heating of iron oxide nanoparticles by microwaves. A nanoporous covalent organic polymer is first formed in situ covering the hard templates of assembled nanoparticles, paving the way for a long‐range order in a carbonaceous nanocomposite precursor. Upon removal of the template, a well‐defined cubic mesoporous carbon structure was revealed. The ordered mesoporous carbon was used in solid state hydrogen storage as a host scaffold for NaAlH4, where remarkable improvement in hydrogen desorption kinetics was observed. The state‐of‐the‐art lowest activation energy of dehydrogenation as a single step was attributed to their ordered pore structure and N‐doping effect.

Nanoporous polymers offer great promise in chemical capture and separations because of their versatility, scalability, and robust nature. Here, we report a general methodology for one-pot, metal-free, and room-temperature synthesis of nanoporous polymers by highly stable carbon−carbon bond formation. Three new polymers, namely, COP-177, COP-178, and COP-179, are derived from widely available perfluoroarenes and found to be superhydrophobic, microporous, and highly stable against heat, acid, base, and organic solvents. Nitrile, amine, and ether functionalities were successfully installed by S N Ar-type postfunctionalization and were shown to increase CO 2 uptake twice and CO 2 /N 2 selectivity 4-fold. Due to its inherent superhydrophobicity, COP-177 showed high organic solvent uptake both in liquid and vapor form. Furthermore, in a first of its kind, by combining microporosity and hydrophobicity, COP-177 separated two small molecules with the same boiling point in a continuous column setting.

Effective removal of excess greenhouse gas CO 2 necessitates new adsorbents that can overcome the shortcomings of the current capture methods. To achieve that, porous materials are often modified post-synthetically with reactive amine functionalities but suffer from significant surface area losses. Herein, we report a successful amine post-functionalization of a highly porous covalent organic polymer, COP-130, without losing much porosity. By varying the amine substituents, we recorded a remarkable increase in CO 2 uptake and selectivity. Ketone functionality, a rarely accessible functional group for porous polymers, was inserted prior to amination and led to covalent tethering of amines. Interestingly, aminated polymers demonstrated relatively low heats of adsorption, which is useful for the rapid recyclability of materials, due to the formation of suspected intramolecular hydrogen bonding.