Conjugated macro-microporous polymer films bearing tetraphenylethylenes for the enhanced sensing of nitrotoluenes

Abstract

Conjugated microporous polymer films (CMP-Fs) bearing tetraphenylethylene moieties showed aggregation-induced emission behavior, which can be utilized for the emission quenching-based sensing of nitrotoluenes. In this work, macroporous CMP-Fs (MA-CMP-Fs) were engineered using assembled silica spheres as templates. The MA-CMP-Fs showed much better sensing performance toward nitrotoluenes with Stern-Volmer constants (K-SV) of up to 1.39 x 10(5) M-1, compared with CMP-Fs (K-SV up to 5.57 x 10(4) M-1). The sensing performance of the MA-CMP-F is superior to those of recent emissive CMP materials (K-SV in the range of 2.08 x 10(3) to 6.78 x 10(4) M-1 for nitroarenes) in the literature, which is attributable to the additional macroporosity of the CMP-F. Also, we demonstrated that various functional CMP films with macroporous inner structures can be developed using tailored building blocks.