Despite the noteworthy progress made in the nanotubular architectures with well-de ned lengths and diameter, the synthesis of a purely covalent bonded organic nanotube, so far, proved to be elusive. Our work includes a hitherto unavailable structure, "Covalent Organic Nanotubes (CONTs)," to the repertoire. Strong covalent bonds between C, N, and O imparts high thermal and chemical stability of CONTs. This novel bottom-up approach provides an edge over the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in functionalization, synthetic conditions, and porosity. CONT-1 exhibits a BET surface area of 321 m2g-1. These exible CONTs intertwine with each other. The computational studies establish the role of solvent as the critical driving force for this type of convolution. Upon ultrasonication, the intertwined CONT-1 coil to form the toroidal superstructure.
For the first time a hexagonal single crystal structure (Form II) of trimesic acid (TMA) was isolated by dissolving the interpenetrated Form I of TMA in THF. To the best of our knowledge, this is the smallest building block which selfassembles to a 2D hydrogen bonded framework structure. A detailed time dependent FESEM study established a strong correlation between molecular level structure with morphology of TMA. The external morphology of the Form II (hexagonal) illustrates layered hexagonal structure while an inside-out Ostwald ripening is responsible for hexagonal hollow tube formation. These hollow tubes are used for Rhodamine B dye adsorption study, which shows uptake of 82%, much more significant than Form I (interpenetrated) (39%).
The development of synthetic routes for the formation of robust porous organic polymers (POPs) with well‐defined nanoscale morphology is fundamentally significant for their practical applications. The thermodynamic characteristics that arise from reversible covalent bonding impart intrinsic chemical instability in the polymers, thereby impeding their overall potential. Herein, a unique strategy is reported to overcome the stability issue by designing robust imidazole‐linked POPs via tandem reversible/irreversible bond formation. Incorporating inherent rigidity into the secondary building units leads to robust microporous polymeric nanostructures with hollow‐spherical morphologies. An in‐depth analysis by extensive solid‐state NMR (1D and 2D) study on 1H, 13C, and 14N nuclei elucidates the bonding and reveals the high purity of the newly designed imidazole‐based POPs. The nitrogen‐rich polymeric nanostructures are further used as metal‐free electrocatalysts for water splitting. In particular, the rigid POPs show excellent catalytic activity toward the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with long‐term durability. Among them, the most efficient OER electrocatalyst (TAT‐TFBE) requires 314 mV of overpotential to drive 10 mA cm−2 current density, demonstrating its superiority over state‐of‐the‐art catalysts (RuO2 and IrO2).
Few-layer organic nanosheets are becoming increasingly attractive as two-dimensional (2D) materials due to their precise atomic connectivity and tailor-made pores. However, most strategies for synthesizing nanosheets rely on surface-assisted methods or top-down exfoliation of stacked materials. A bottomup approach with well-designed building blocks would be the convenient pathway to achieve the bulk-scale synthesis of 2D nanosheets with uniform size and crystallinity. Herein, we have synthesized crystalline covalent organic framework nanosheets (CONs) by reacting tetratopic thianthrene tetraaldehyde (THT) and aliphatic diamines. The bent geometry of thianthrene in THT retards the out-ofplane stacking, while the flexible diamines introduce dynamic characteristics into the framework, facilitating nanosheet formation. Successful isoreticulation with five diamines with two to six carbon chain lengths generalizes the design strategy. Microscopic imaging reveals that the odd and even diamine-based CONs transmute to different nanostructures, such as nanotubes and hollow spheres. The single-crystal X-ray diffraction structure of repeating units indicates that the odd−even linker units of diamines introduce irregular−regular curvature in the backbone, aiding such dimensionality conversion. Theoretical calculations shed more light on nanosheet stacking and rolling behavior with respect to the odd−even effects.
Covalent organic nanotubes (CONTs) are one-dimensional porous frameworks constructed from organic building blocks via dynamic covalent chemistry. CONTs are synthesized as insoluble powder that restricts their potential applications. The judicious selection of 2,2′-bipyridine-5,5′-dicarbaldehyde and tetraaminotriptycene as building blocks for TAT-BPy CONTs has led to constructing flexible yet robust and self-standing fabric up to 3 μm thickness. The TAT-BPy CONTs and TAT-BPy CONT fabric have been characterized by solid-state one-dimensional (1D) 13C CP-MAS, two-dimensional (2D) 13C–1H correlation NMR, 2D 1H–1H DQ–SQ NMR, and 2D 14N–1H correlation NMR spectroscopy. The mechanism of fabric formation has been established by using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy techniques. The as-synthesized viscoelastic TAT-BPy CONT fabric exhibits high mechanical strength with a reduced modulus (E r) of 8 (±3) GPa and hardness (H) of 0.6 (±0.3) GPa. Interestingly, the viscoelastic fabric shows time-dependent elastic depth recovery up to 50–70%.
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