A tunable ionic covalent organic framework platform for efficient CO₂ catalytic conversion

Abstract

The cycloaddition reaction between epoxides and CO₂ is an effective method to utilize CO₂ resource. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) provide a promising platform for the catalytic CO₂ transformations on account of their remarkable chemical and physical properties. Herein, a family of novel vinylene-linked ionic COFs named TE-COFs (TTE-COF, TME-COF, TPE-COF, TBE-COF) has been facilely synthesized from N-ethyl-2,4,6-trimethylpyridinium bromide and a series of triphenyl aromatic aldehydes involving different numbers of nitrogen atoms in the central aromatic ring. The resulting catalyst TTE-COF with excellent adsorption capacity (45.6 cm³·g^–1, 273 K) exhibited outstanding catalytic performance, remarkable recyclability and great substrate tolerance. Moreover, it was also observed that the introduction of nitrogen atom in the precursor led to a great improvement in the crystallinity and CO₂ adsorption capacity of TE-COFs, thus resulting to a progressively improved catalytic performance. This work not only illustrated the influence of monomer nitrogen content on the crystallinity and CO₂ adsorption capacity of TE-COFs but also provided a green heterogeneous candidate for catalyzing the cycloaddition between CO₂ and epoxides, which shed a light on improving the catalytic performance of the CO₂ cycloaddition reaction by designing the covalent organic frameworks structures.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

CO₂ cycloaddition reaction / covalent organic frameworks / cyclic carbonate / vinylene-linked / synergetic effects

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Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (Grant No. 2022A1515011606) and the Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-023-2369-x and is accessible for authorized users.

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