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.

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin with which food and beverages may be contaminated from a number of sources, both natural and anthropogenic. The determination of mercury at concentrations close to instrumental detection limits suffers from problems related to memory effects and loss, both during sample preparation and within sample introduction systems. L-cysteine (1%) was added to rice samples, standards, and rinse solutions in order to keep the mercury in solution and decrease the memory effect.Gold ( Mercury and its compounds are highly toxic and are of major concern due to their widespread distribution in the environment and the ability of living systems to accumulate them within the food chain.

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.

Chemical modifications of porous materials almost always result in loss of structural integrity, porosity, solubility, or stability. Previous attempts, so far, have not allowed any promising trend to unravel, perhaps because of the complexity of porous network frameworks. But the soluble porous polymers, the polymers of intrinsic microporosity, provide an excellent platform to develop a universal strategy for effective modification of functional groups for current demands in advanced applications. Here, we report complete transformation of PIM-1 nitriles into four previously inaccessible functional groups – ketones, alcohols, imines, and hydrazones – in a single step using volatile reagents and through a counter-intuitive non-solvent approach that enables surface area preservation. The modifications are simple, scalable, reproducible, and give record surface areas for modified PIM-1s despite at times having to pass up to two consecutive post-synthetic transformations. This unconventional dual-mode strategy offers valuable directions for chemical modification of porous materials.

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