Salen-Based Metal Complexes and the Physical Properties of their Porous Organic Polymers

Porous organic polymers (POPs) represent interesting candidate materials for carbon dioxide (CO2) adsorption applications owing to the permanently porous nature of the structures and the ability to vary metalloligand centres that can be incorporated as a potential means of property tuning. This work reports the synthesis and characterisation of four transition metal complexes (using M=Mn, Ni, Fe, and Pd) of the bis-bromo salen ligand, and the incorporation of these complexes into POPs with tris-(p-ethynyl)-triphenylamine to yield metallated polymers (POPMn, POPNi, POPFe, and POPPd). The POPs were shown to possess Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface areas of up to 650m2g−1. Overall, this work provides further insight into the potential of permanently porous polymeric materials in post-combustion capture applications.