Polyimides of intrinsic microporosity are important polymers for gas separation. Achieving polyimides with high permeability and high selectivity relies on rationally designing their chain structure. In this work, new ladder-like diamines, Tröger’s Base (TB) derived diamines, are designed, and two microporous polyimides are constructed by polymerizing TB-derived diamines and spirobisindane based dianhydride, aiming at enhancing the stiffness of the whole backbone and thus achieving improved performance by taking advantage of the stiffness of both diamines and dianhydride. The two polyimides present excellent separation performance, surpassing the 2008 Robeson upper bound for gas pairs of H2/N2 and O2/N2 and approach the 2008 Robeson upper bound for gas pairs H2/CH4 and CO2/CH4. Our results show that the designed polyimides have great potential for application especially for oxygen (O2/N2) and hydrogen (such as H2/N2 and H2/CH4) related separation.

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