The strong radioactivity of iodine compounds derived from nuclear power plant wastes has motivated the development of highly efficient adsorbents. Porous aromatic frameworks (PAFs) have attracted much attention due to their low density and diverse structure. In this work, an azo group containing PAF solid, denoted as LNU-58, was prepared through Suzuki polymerization of tris-(4-(4,4,5,5-tetramethyl-1,3,2-dioxaborolan-2-yl)-phenyl)-amine and 3,5-dibromoazobenzene building monomers. Based on the specific polarity properities of the azo groups, the electron-rich aromatic fragments in the hierarchical architecture efficiently capture iodine molecules with an adsorption capacity of 3533.11 mg g−1 (353 wt%) for gaseous iodine and 903.6 mg g−1 (90 wt%) for dissolved iodine. The iodine uptake per specific surface area up to 8.55 wt% m−2 g−1 achieves the highest level among all porous adsorbents. This work illustrates the successful preparation of a new type of porous adsorbent that is expected to be applied in the field of practical iodine adsorption.

Porous aromatic frameworks (PAFs) composed of high‐density phenyl units are renowned for stable micro/meso‐porous architecture and highly hydrophobic surface, which make them ideal candidates for durable superhydrophobic applications, especially under harsh conditions. Herein, a carbazole‐based PAF solid is synthesized using carbazole and triphenylamine as the building units through the CC linking pattern. For the first time, the PAF powder is uniformly deposited on the fabric surface via a facile dip‐coating method, which thus shows superhydrophobicity with high water contact angle of 153.8° and oil contact angle of approximately 0°. Consequently, the PAF‐coated fabric displays an outstanding simple oil/water mixture and separation efficiency of over 96% and enables simple and time‐saving cyclic utilization at least 10 times. Due to the ultrahigh stability of PAF skeleton, the PAF‐based composite maintains high superhydrophobicity under extreme conditions including high temperature, high humidity, and strong acidic/alkaline solutions. These results delineate important research advances toward the implementation of PAF powder in superhydrophobic applications.

Porous carbon nanofibers with unique hierarchical structures have great potential in many fields, including heterogeneous catalysis, optoelectronics, and sensing. However, several preparation issues, such as additional templates, complicated processes, and harsh conditions, seriously hamper their widespread use. Here, we control the Sonogashira coupling reaction of linear building monomers1,4-dibromaphthalene and 1,4-ethylbenzeneat the molecular level. Due to the occurrence of branching chain reaction (side reaction), 1D oligomer expands the growth orientation in the plane direction, forming a curled 1D fiber polymer. After thermaldriven skeleton engineering, porous carbon nanofibers were obtained with hierarchical channels of macro-(150 nm), meso-(5.2 nm), and microcavities (0.5 and 1.3 nm). The integration of macro-/meso-/ microporous structure reveals a fast and sufficient interaction with electrolyte molecules, facilitating the construction of high-performance electrical devices. Our strategy, using a side reaction to achieve the dimensionality control of 1D copolymerization, paves a new way for the facile preparation of porous carbon nanofibers.

Due to the frequent oil/organic solvent leakage, efficient oil/water separation has attracted extensive concern. However, conventional porous materials possess nonpolar building units, which reveal relatively weak affinity for polar organic molecules. Here, two different polarities of superhydrophobic porous aromatic frameworks (PAFs) were synthesized with respective orthoposition and paraposition C=O groups in the PAF linkers. The conjugated structure formed by a large number of alkynyl and benzene ring structures enabled porous and superhydrophobic quality of PAFs. After the successful preparation of the PAF solids, PAF powders were coated on polyester fabrics by a simple dip-coating method, which endowed the resulting polyester fabrics with superhydrophobicity, porosity, and excellent stability. Based on the unique structure, the oil/water separation efficiency of two superhydrophobic flexible fabrics was more than 90% for various organic solvents. Polar LNU-26 PAF showed better separation performance for the polar oils. This work takes the lead in adopting the polar groups as building units for the preparation of porous networks, which has great guiding significance for the construction of advanced oil/water separation materials.