Coordinative nanoporous polymers synthesized with hydrogen-bonded columnar liquid crystals

In this paper, we report the development of nanoporous polymer which demonstrates the coordination property toward zinc porphyrin. A hydrogen-bonded columnar liquid crystalline precursor composed of a triphenylene template and three equivalent of the surrounding dendric amphiphile bearing a pyridyl head group and a polymerizable aliphatic chain, was covalently fixed by photopolymerization, and then the subsequent selective removal of the template successively resulted in a nanoporous polymer in which the pore wall is modified with pyridyl groups. The nanoporous polymer reflected the conformation of template, and displayed considerable coordination ability of the pyridyl groups towards zinc porphyrin. The coordinative nanoporous polymer is promising as a nano-scaled scaffold for the organization of dyes into functional supramolecular architectures.