A soft chemistry synthetic strategy based on a Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction is developed for the textural engineering of phenolic resin (PR) with a robust mesoporous framework to avoid serious framework shrinkage and maximize retention of organic functional moieties. By taking advantage of the structural benefits of molecular bridges, the resultant sample maintains a bimodal micro-mesoporous architecture with well-preserved organic functional groups, which is effective for carbon capture. Moreover, this soft chemistry synthetic protocol can be further extended to nanotexture other arene-based polymers with robust frameworks.
Keywords: CO2 capture; friedel-crafts alkylation; hypercrosslinking; mesoporous frameworks; phenolic polymer.
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