Functionalized nanoporous carbon materials have attracted the colossal interest of the materials science fraternity owing to their intriguing physical and chemical properties including a well-ordered porous structure, exemplary high specific surface areas, electronic and ionic conductivity, excellent accessibility to active sites, and enhanced mass transport and diffusion. These properties make them a special and unique choice for various applications in divergent fields such as energy storage batteries, supercapacitors, energy conversion fuel cells, adsorption/separation of bulky molecules, heterogeneous catalysts, catalyst supports, photocatalysis, carbon capture, gas storage, biomolecule detection, vapour sensing and drug delivery. Because of the anisotropic and synergistic effects arising from the heteroatom doping at the nanoscale, these novel materials show high potential especially in electrochemical applications such as batteries, supercapacitors and electrocatalysts for fuel cell applications and water electrolysis. In order to gain the optimal benefit, it is necessary to implement tailor made functionalities in the porous carbon surfaces as well as in the carbon skeleton through the comprehensive experimentation. These most appealing nanoporous carbon materials can be synthesized through the carbonization of high carbon containing molecular precursors by using soft or hard templating or non-templating pathways. This review encompasses the approaches and the wide range of methodologies that have been employed over the last five years in the preparation and functionalisation of nanoporous carbon materials via incorporation of metals, non-metal heteroatoms, multiple heteroatoms, and various surface functional groups that mostly dictate their place in a wide range of practical applications.

A covalent triazine framework (CTF) with embedded polymeric sulfur and a high sulfur content of 62 wt % was synthesized under catalyst- and solvent-free reaction conditions from 1,4-dicyanobenzene and elemental sulfur. Our synthetic approach introduces a new way of preparing CTFs under environmentally benign conditions by the direct utilization of elemental sulfur. The homogeneous sulfur distribution is due to the in situ formation of the framework structure, and chemical sulfur impregnation within the micropores of CTF effectively suppresses the dissolution of polysulfides into the electrolyte. Furthermore, the triazine framework facilitates electron and ion transport, which leads to a high-performance lithium-sulfur battery.

Mesoporous carbon nitrides (MCN) are fascinating materials with unique semiconducting and basic properties that are useful in many applications including photocatalysis and sensing. Most syntheses of MCN focus on creating theoretically predicted C 3 N 4 stoichiometry with ab and gap of 2.7 eV using an ano-hardt emplating approach with triazine-based precursors.However,the performance of the MCN in semiconducting applications is limited to the MCN framework with as mall band gap,whichwould be linked with the addition of more N in the CN framework, but this remains ahuge challenge.Here, we report ap recursor with high nitrogen content, 3-amino-1,2,4-triazole,t hat enables the formation of new and wellordered 3D MCN with C 3 N 5 stoichiometry (MCN-8), which has not been predicted so far,a nd al ow-band-gape nergy (2.2 eV). This novel class of material without addition of any dopants shows not only as uperior photocatalytic watersplitting performance with at otal of 801 mmol of H 2 under visible-light irradiation for 3h but also excellent sensing properties for toxic acids.Carbon nitrides (CN) are of particular importance because of their unique properties such as high bulk moduli, low density,high thermal conductivity,semiconductivity,biocompatibility,a nd tunability of band gaps.[1] These properties make them special and help to advance their performance in various applications including adsorption, gas storage,photocatalysis,e nergy storage,a nd sensing.[2-4] However,t he efficiency of these materials in the above applications is related to their crystal structure,p orosity,a nd most importantly the nitrogen content in the CN framework. The porosity in CN was first realized by Vinu et al. who used the hard templating approach for creating CN with ahigh specific surface area and remarkable pore structures. [5,6] These materials suffer from poor nitrogen content due to al ow thermodynamic stability of Ni nt he carbon framework at ahigh temperature,which limits their performance in various applications.T his triggers various research groups to develop different preparation routes for porous CN by annealing the precursors with high nitrogen content at ahigh temperature. Forexample,non-porous graphitic C 3 N 4 has been prepared by using different Nrich precursors such as cyanamide,thiourea, ammonium thiocyanate,m elamine,u rea, and cyanuric chloride.[4] On the other hand, mesoporous carbon nitrides (MCN) can be prepared by anano-hard templating approach using nitrogen-containing precursors such as triazine or cyanamide or guanidine. [7][8][9][10] Then itrogen content of these materials are limited to the C/N ratio higher than 0.75 (C 3 N 4 ), which generally provides CN walls with triazine network. [11,12] In contrast to MCN with the stoichiometry of C 3 N 4 ,MCN with C 3 N 5 framework has not been synthesized as it is challenging and requires modification of the CN framework structure in order to introduce more nitrogen into the triazine network. MCN with C 3 N 5 and well-ordered porous structure could sign...

The quest for the development of new porous materials addressing both CO capture from various sources and its conversion into useful products is a very active research area and also critical in order to develop a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly society. Here, we present the first charged covalent triazine framework (cCTF) prepared by simply heating nitrile functionalized dicationic viologen derivatives under ionothermal reaction conditions using ZnCl as both solvent and trimerization catalyst. It has been demonstrated that the surface area, pore volume/size of cCTFs can be simply controlled by varying the synthesis temperature and the ZnCl content. Specifically, increasing the reaction temperature led to controlled increase in the mesopore content and facilitated the formation of hierarchical porosity, which is critical to ensure efficient mass transport within porous materials. The resulting cCTFs showed high specific surface areas up to 1247 m g, and high physicochemical stability. The incorporation of ionic functional moieties to porous organic polymers improved substantially their CO affinity (up to 133 mg g, at 1 bar and 273 K) and transformed them into hierarchically porous organocatalysts for CO conversion. More importantly, the ionic nature of cCTFs, homogeneous charge distribution together with hierarchical porosity offered a perfect platform for the catalytic conversion of CO into cyclic carbonates in the presence of epoxides through an atom economy reaction in high yields and exclusive product selectivity. These results clearly demonstrate the promising aspect of incorporation of charged units into the porous organic polymers for the development of highly efficient porous organocatalysts for CO capture and fixation.