„Polarity and Functionality Tailored Conjugated Microporous Polymer Coatings on Silica Microspheres for Enhanced Pollutant Adsorption”

Many sources of pollution that are generated by modern society are not addressable by conventional methods. Especially organic compounds, like pharmaceutics, are particularly hard to remove from waterbodies. Herein, a new approach is presented using conjugated microporous polymers (CMPs) to coat silica microparticles yielding specifically tailored adsorbents. The CMPs are generated with three different monomers: 2,6-dibromonaphthalene (DBN), 2,5-dibromoaniline (DBA) and 2,5-dibromopyridine (DBPN) respectively coupled to 1,3,5-triethynylbenzene (TEB) via Sonogashira coupling. By optimizing the polarity of the silica surface, all three CMPs were converted into microparticle coatings. The resulting hybrid materials feature the advantages of being adjustable in polarity and functionality, as well as morphology. Sedimentation allows facile removal of the coated microparticles after the adsorption. Further, the expansion of the CMP to a thin coating increases the accessible surface area compared to the bulk material. These effects were demonstrated by the adsorption of the model drug diclofenac. Thereby, the aniline-based CMP proved to be most advantageous due to a secondary crosslinking mechanism of amino and alkyne functionalities. An outstanding adsorption capacity of 228 mg diclofenac per gram of the aniline CMP within the hybrid material was achieved. This represents a five-fold increase compared to the value obtained by the pure CMP material underlining the advantages of the hybrid material.