Cadiam Mohan Babu

A new strategy to synthesize hypercross-linked conjugated polystyrene and its application towards CO2 sorption

Polystyrene is cross-linked to generate micropores for sorption applications. Herein, we report, hypercross-linking of polystyrene in the presence of Friedel-Crafts catalyst, FeCl3 without a cross-linker. For comparison, polystyrene was also hypercross-linked with a cross-linker, dimethoxy methane with the same catalyst. The cross-linking and de-hydrogenation of cross-links to quinonoid formation were confirmed by FT-IR and 13C-NMR techniques. The hyper cross-linked polymers (HCPs) were also characterized by TGA, DRS-UV, SEM, Raman, BET and CO2 sorption techniques. All the HCPs showed a maximum of 5 weight % CO2 sorption at 25 oC and 1 atm. The same polymers could also be applied for the sorption of other air pollutants.