Novel amino-functionalized hypercrosslinked polymer nanoparticles constructed from commercial macromolecule polystyrene via a two-step strategy for CO2 adsorption

Attractive materials fundamentally depend on both performance and industrialization potential. To address the scale-up concern, a simple and highly effective synthesis of porous organic polymers from commercial building blocks/monomers is urgently needed. Here we report the fabrication of amino-functionalized hypercrosslinked polymer nanoparticles (AHCPNPs) for CO2 capture by utilizing commercial polystyrene (PS) as the main building blocks and poly(tert-butyl acrylate)-b-poly(styrene) (PtBA-b-PS) diblock copolymers as a stabilizer. The 2-step synthetic strategy includes hypercrosslinking of benzene units in PS and PtBA-b-PS chains and subsequent aminolysis reaction of the acrylate-unit in PtBA-b-PS chains by diamine compounds. The AHCPNPs demonstrate a well-defined microporous structure with a specific surface area of up to 507.64 m2 g−1 and an extreme capacity of 53.65 w% (12.21 mmol g−1) for carbon dioxide adsorption. The definite control over the particle size and porous properties of these AHCPNPs has been achieved by changing the BA/S ratio of the diblock copolymers and the mass ratio of PtBA-b-PS to PS. Our findings may open up a new avenue for scale-up fabrication that possesses a well-porous structure from commercial polymeric materials and thus generate valuable breakthroughs in many applications, especially in industrialization.