Imide-Based Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity: Probing the Microstructure in Relation to CO2 Sorption Characteristics

Worood A Elmehalmey; Rasha A Azzam; Youssef S Hassan; Mohamed H Alkordi; Tarek M Madkour

doi:10.1021/acsomega.7b02080

Imide-Based Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity: Probing the Microstructure in Relation to CO₂ Sorption Characteristics

ACS Omega. 2018 Mar 8;3(3):2757-2764. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.7b02080. eCollection 2018 Mar 31.

Authors

Worood A Elmehalmey^{1

2}, Rasha A Azzam³, Youssef S Hassan², Mohamed H Alkordi², Tarek M Madkour¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, The American University in Cairo, AUC Avenue, P.O. Box 74, New Cairo 11835, Egypt.
² Center for Materials Science, Zewail City of Science and Technology, October Gardens, 6th of October, Giza 12578, Egypt.
³ Department of Chemistry, Helwan University, Ain-Helwan, Cairo 11795, Egypt.

Abstract

A range of microporous, imide-based polymers were newly synthesized using two-step poly-condensation reactions of bis(carboxylic anhydride) and various aromatic diamines for CO₂ gas capture and storage applications. In this report, we attempted to assess the relative significance of molecular structural aspects through the manipulation of the conformational characteristics of the building blocks of the polymeric structures, the spiro-containing acid anhydride and the aromatic amines, to induce greater intrinsic microporosity and higher surface areas for the resulting solids. Results obtained from this study were thus used to outline a working relationship between the structural diversity of the constructed porous solids and their performance as CO₂ sorbents.