Construction of rigid ionic porous organic polymers (iPOPs) via Zincke reaction with tunable absorption behaviors

Two rigid ionic porous organic polymers (iPOPs-1 and iPOPs-2) were fabricated via the well-known Zincke reaction. Starting from different monomers which bring the different bridging structures, the porosity and dye-removal capacities of two polymers can be handled readily. Both polymers exhibited excellent capacity for dye-removal (e.g., 1823.1 mg g−1 of iPOPs-1 and 1247 mg g−1 of iPOPs-2 for methyl orange), which are the highest among all reported iPOPs. Interestingly, iPOPs-1 absorbed solely methyl orange (MO) in the mixtures of MO and methyl blue (MB), and as a contrast, iPOPs-2 showed the full adsorption of MO/MB dyes indicating the apparent size effect. Furthermore, by using a gentle washing program, they can be recycled and reused at least five times without significantly reducing performance. This research thereby provides a new strategy and insight to rationally tune the porous properties and the following adsorption capacity of iPOPs.