Conjugated macro–microporous polymer films bearing tetraphenylethylenes for the enhanced sensing of nitrotoluenes

Abstract

Conjugated microporous polymer films (CMP-Fs) bearing tetraphenylethylene moieties showed aggregation-induced emission behavior, which can be utilized for the emission quenching-based sensing of nitrotoluenes. In this work, macroporous CMP-Fs (MA-CMP-Fs) were engineered using assembled silica spheres as templates. The MA-CMP-Fs showed much better sensing performance toward nitrotoluenes with Stern–Volmer constants (K_SV) of up to 1.39 × 10⁵ M⁻¹, compared with CMP-Fs (K_SV up to 5.57 × 10⁴ M⁻¹). The sensing performance of the MA-CMP-F is superior to those of recent emissive CMP materials (K_SV in the range of 2.08 × 10³ to 6.78 × 10⁴ M⁻¹ for nitroarenes) in the literature, which is attributable to the additional macroporosity of the CMP-F. Also, we demonstrated that various functional CMP films with macroporous inner structures can be developed using tailored building blocks.