Design and Synthesis of Porous Organic Polymeric Materials from Norbornene Derivatives

The interest in porous organic materials derived from norbornenes is driven by versatile chemistry of norbornenes, fine-tunable structure of these polymers, high accessible surface area, and large free volume of polynorbornenes for technical applications in adsorption, membrane separation, gas storage, and heterogeneous catalysis. This comprehensive review surveys recent research trends in the development of porous polynorbornenes. A rational design was achieved in metathesis, addition, and CANAL polymers as an extension of the modular strategy using norbornene motifs as building blocks. Tuning the structure of norbornene-containing monomer units allowed obtaining high-free-volume polymers with apparent Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface areas up to 1000 m2/g that made these materials promising for various engineering applications such as membrane gas separation, gas sorbents, CO2 capture, scaffolds to support catalysts, or reagents for catalysis. The synthesis and porous characteristics of polynorbornenes are presented along with the discussion of correlations between the chemical structure of these materials and their porous structures. Possible important applications of porous polynorbornenes are also emphasized.