Elucidating the Role of Heteroatoms in Hypercrosslinked Polymer Adsorbents for Atmospheric Water Harvesting

Abstract

Hypercrosslinked polymers offer a promising platform for efficient adsorption-based atmospheric water harvesting, yet remain relatively unexplored. Here, we systematically introduce nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, or sulfone moieties into hypercrosslinked polymer backbones to evaluate the impact of heteroatom inclusion on water sorption. Although the varying of the polymer skeleton significantly enhanced hydrophilicity, leading to total water capacity increases of up to 300%, heteroatom incorporation alone did not shift water uptake onsets to humidity levels relevant for atmospheric water harvesting. To address this, we also introduce sulfonate groups, which significantly improve both total water uptake and adsorption at low relative humidity. The best-performing material, SHCP-SO, achieves 0.69 g·g⁻¹ uptake at 90% RH and 0.18 g·g⁻¹ at 30% RH, with excellent long-term cycling stability. By tweaking network composition, our findings elucidate the role of various heteroatom sites and porosity for atmospheric water harvesting and unveil key porous organic polymer design principles.