Thickness controllable hypercrosslinked porous polymer nanofilm with high CO₂ capture capacity

Thickness controllable porous polymer nanofilm with superior gas storage capacity has gradually emerged as promising adsorbents for capture of CO₂, due to extremely high surface area and micro-scale pore. In this work, we have developed a novel and facile strategy to fabricate thickness controllable two or three dimensional ordered porous nanofilm based on poly(styrene-butyl acrylate), in combination with covalently layer by layer (LBL) self-assemble process and hypercrosslinked post-treatment. Abundant microporous structures and a small number of mesoporous structures are formed in hypercorsslinked nanofilm and corresponding surface area derived from Brunauer-Emmett-Teller method (BET) were determined to be 605.7 m²/g. The capacity of CO₂ capture was also measured, which reach up to 53.6 wt% (12.2 mmol/g) at 273 K/1 bar, which is comparable to highest record. We have found that all the as prepared nanofilm with different thickness exhibited apparently enhanced micro- and meso-porosity after hypercrosslinking. Moreover, with the increase of thickness of nanofilm, the adsorption capacity decreases gradually, as well as the CO₂ adsorption capacity. An excellent recycling capacity for CO₂ capture have also found for this porous polymer nanofilm via repetitive adsorption-desorption assay. Our work confirmed that thickness controllable porous polymer nanofilm with superior CO₂ capture capacity can be fabricated by a very simple strategy which can meet the challenges of the current CO₂ capture and storage technology.