Coupling fullerene into porous aromatic frameworks for gas selective sorption

Abstract

A lot of investigations calculate that fullerene would be an excellent unit for porous adsorbents for gas sorption and separation. Although the conjugated structure and symmetrical shape of fullerene makes it an ideal building block, there is no facile strategy to achieve fullerene-based porous materials. Herein, we adopt a novel acid catalyzed coupling reaction to bind the fullerene molecules together in a one-step synthesis. After synthesizing the adducts as models, the atomic connectivity between the fullerene molecules is determined clearly. We then prepared a series of fullerene-based porous aromatic frameworks (PAFs). The targeted products adsorb H₂ and CO₂, and they exhibit some selectivity of CO₂ over N₂ and CH₄. The good performance of the PAFs indicates that we could combine the gas binding ability of the building block and the porous nature of PAF materials together to give a better adsorbent.