Preferential Incorporation of Less Polarizable Donor Nitrogen in Porous Organic Polymers for Versatile Strategies

Abstract

The presence of a heteroatom, particularly a nitrogen atom, in a framework material can offer manifold advantages, such as chelation capacity, Lewis basicity, and efficient hard-soft acid-base coordination. The recent decade has witnessed nitrogen-rich porous organic polymers (POPs) as the most developed, versatile class of porous materials, showing enormous promise as a platform for heterogeneous catalysis, gas capture and fixation, toxic pollutant removal, and energy storage materials, among others. The POPs are made from a variety of functional organic units joined by high-energy covalent bonds, utilizing sophisticated organic synthesis techniques. A decent number of publications, including reviews, highlights appearing in the recent literature have focused on the facets of synthetic methodologies, and their integration in organic transformation reactions, adsorption and separation technologies, and electrode materials. Perhaps, a thorough perspective on the theme of the title is the need of the hour to facilitate researchers, design nitrogen-rich framework materials and correlate structurally divergent nitrogen species and nitrogen (N) content, customised for a vast array of applications ranging from catalysis, separation, to energy materials.