Porous organic polymers (POPs) have plenteous exciting features due to their attractive combination of microporosity with π-conjugation. Nevertheless, electrodes based on their pristine forms suffer from severe poverty of electrical conductivity, precluding their employment within electrochemical appliances. The electrical conductivity of POPs may be significantly improved and their porosity properties could be further customized by direct carbonization. In this study, we successfully prepared a microporous carbon material (Py-PDT POP-600) by the carbonization of Py-PDT POP, which was designed using a condensation reaction between 6,6'-(1,4-phenylene)bis(1,3,5-triazine-2,4-diamine) (PDA-4NH2) and 4,4',4'',4'''-(pyrene-1,3,6,8-tetrayl)tetrabenzaldehyde (Py-Ph-4CHO) in the presence of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as a solvent. The obtained Py-PDT POP-600 with a high nitrogen content had a high surface area (up to 314 m2 g-1), high pore volume, and good thermal stability based on N2 adsorption/desorption data and a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Owing to the good surface area, the as-prepared Py-PDT POP-600 showed excellent performance in CO2 uptake (2.7 mmol g-1 at 298 K) and a high specific capacitance of 550 F g-1 at 0.5 A g-1 compared with the pristine Py-PDT POP (0.24 mmol g-1 and 28 F g-1).
Keywords: Schiff base condensation reaction; carbonization; electrochemical performance; gas uptake; porous organic polymers.