Porous Organic Polymers for CO₂ Capture and Electroreduction: Recent Advances and Future Perspectives

Increasing atmospheric CO₂ levels necessitate the development of efficient capture and conversion technologies. Porous organic polymers (POPs) have emerged as promising candidates owing to their high surface area, structural tunability, and chemical stability. This review summarizes recent molecular engineering strategies for enhancing CO₂ adsorption and electrochemical reduction (CO₂RR), including heteroatom doping, post-synthetic functional group grafting, and integration with carbon-based materials. These approaches significantly enhance catalytic selectivity, stability, and conversion efficiency to value-added products, such as CO, formate, methanol, and ethanol, under mild conditions. Despite these advances, key challenges remain, including low intrinsic electrical conductivity, difficulties in scalable synthesis, and limited control over pore architecture. Future research should focus on developing dual-functional POPs capable of simultaneous CO₂ capture and conversion, improving electrical conductivity, and establishing scalable and cost-effective fabrication strategies. The integration of computational design, in situ/operando characterization, and device-level optimization will be crucial for bridging the gap between laboratory-scale performance and practical industrial applications.