Amorphous Porous Organic Polymers Based on Schiff-Base Chemistry for Highly Efficient Iodine Capture

Chem Asian J. 2018 Jun 5. doi: 10.1002/asia.201800698. Online ahead of print.

Abstract

Porous organic polymers (POPs) have been considered as prominent adsorbents for volatile iodine. So far, both crystalline and amorphous POPs have accomplished excellent iodine capture capability. Considering the difficulty and challenges in preparing perfect crystalline POPs, more explorations into developing versatile amorphous POPs are needed. Herein, amorphous POPs based on the Schiff-base reaction were designed and synthesized for volatile iodine removal. Four amorphous POPs products named as NDB-H, NDB-S, ADB-HS, and ADB-S obtained under different solvothermal conditions were investigated in terms of their morphologies, porosity, and their iodine enrichment performance in detail. It is noteworthy that excellent efficiency for removing iodine vapor was acquired for NDB-S (≈425 wt %), ADB-HS (≈345 wt %), and ADB-S (≈342 wt %). Remarkably, NDB-H exhibited an iodine capture capacity up to ≈443 wt %. Excellent reusability was obtained as well. Amorphous NDB-H has accomplished an extremely high iodine capture performance, illustrating the great chance to exploit versatile amorphous POPs for iodine enrichment and removal based on Schiff-base chemistry.

Keywords: Schiff-base chemistry; iodine capture; porous organic polymers.