Amorphous Microporous Polymer Frameworks

多孔材料具有广泛的技术和科学兴趣，因为它们可以具有非常大的表面积;例如，仅一克高度多孔的活性炭材料可以表现出比足球场大得多的表面积。这导致了传感器技术（灵敏度取决于表面积）和气体储存（需要大的表面积来粘附气体分子）等领域的应用。微孔材料具有非常小的孔-仅略大于气体分子。目前，人们对通过直接化学合成来控制微孔性质非常感兴趣，即通过刚性有机分子的形状和连接性来限定微孔的形状。在这项提案中，我们的目标是合成具有全新物理特性的微孔有机聚合物-例如，通过在结构上照射光线可以打开或关闭表面积的聚合物。这将需要在制造这些结构的合成方法以及理解这些复杂分子的表征技术方面取得一些重大进展。该提案侧重于基础科学，以实现对微孔分子结构的控制。从长远来看，我们预计将在广泛的技术中应用，如分离，催化和气体储存。

Porous materials are of wide technical and scientific interest because they can have very large surface areas; for example, just one gram of a highly porous activated carbon material can exhibit a surface area which is much greater than a football pitch. This gives rise to applications in fields such as sensor technology (where the sensitivity depends on surface area) and gas storage (where large surface areas are needed to stick the gas molecules). Microporous materials have pores which are extremely small - only slightly larger than gas molecules. There is currently much interest in the control of microporous properties by direct chemical synthesis - that is, by defining the shape of the micropores by the shape and connectivity of rigid organic molecules. In this proposal we aim to synthesize microporous organic polymers with completely new physical properties - for example, polymers where the surface area can be turned on or off by shining light on the structure. This will require a number of major advances in the synthetic methods for making these structures and also in the charaterisation techniques for understanding these complex molecules. The proposal focuses on the underpinning science to achieve control over the molecular structure of the micropores. In the longer term, we expect applications in a broad range of technologies such as separations, catalysis, and gas storage.