Amorphous Microporous Polymer Frameworks

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.