Monolithic Conjugated Microporous Polymers with Antibacterial Activity for Air Filtration

Abstract

The air pollution caused by particulate matters (PMs) poses a severe threat to the human health. In particular, the fine particles with diameter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) can be carriers of various bacteria and viruses, accelerating spread of epidemic. In this work, we synthesized two robust and flexible conjugated microporous polymer (CMP) aerogels for PMs removal, via one-step coupling polymerization of arylethynylenes and aryl halides with different molecular configuration. The resulting CMP aerogels comprise of hollow nanotubes with 3D porous network and high surface areas up to 660 m2 g-1. The efficiency of CMP aerogels for PM2.5 and PM10 was 99.5±0.3% and 99.8±0.1% with a long-term durability. In combination with their physicochemical stability and inherent surface hydrophobicity, a high efficiency for PM2.5 filtration more than 99.6±0.1% also can be obtained at a high humidity at room temperature both for the two CMP aerogels. In addition, benefiting from the rich alkynyl groups in skeletons, post-modification of the resulting CMP aerogels with thiol-yne chemistry followed by silver ion uptake gives rise to antibacterial materials with outstanding activity for gram-positive strains far superior to other porous organic polymer materials. This work provides a new avenue to fabricate bifunctional CMP-derived porous aerogels for air filtration with high performance and antibacterial activity, and is expected to expand the application of CMPs in environmental purification.

Keywords: Conjugated microporous polymers, Aerogel, Nanotubes, antibacterial, PM2.5 capture