Tethering Flexible Polymers to Crystalline Porous Materials: A Win-Win Hybridization Approach

Crystalline porous materials (CPMs) have been widely studied over the past few decades due to their well-defined, customizable, and porous structures. However, the limited stability and machinability restrict their particle applications. Recently, a new trend to use hybrid strategies to bridge the gap between CPMs and flexible polymers has emerged as an effective solution to tackle the above issues. Polymers can be either cross-linked within the framework or anchored to the outer surface of the materials, that endow CPMs with polymer features, such as flexibility, ductility, and machinability. Such resulting polymer-tethered CPMs (named as polyCPMs) have demonstrated improved performances in many application scopes such as membrane separation, heterogeneous catalysis and smart response. This minireview highlights state of the art for the hybridization strategies of CPMs with flexible polymers, and provide a perspective on their potential applications and future directions.