Development of high-performance ionic
organic network (ION) adsorbents
is of great importance for water remediation. However, the research
on IONs is still nascent, especially, the design philosophy regarding
contaminant adsorption has rarely been explored. In this contribution,
we optimized the adsorption efficiency of IONs by increasing the density
of charged sites and improving their accessibility. We first produced
a new cationic organic network (CON), CON-LDU4, with
a high density of positive sites via synthesis from
tetra(4-pyridyl)ethene. Compared to the analogue CON-LDU2 that synthesized from tetra(4-(4-pyridyl)phenyl)ethene, CON-LDU4 exhibited higher efficiency in adsorption of methyl blue, indicating
that the higher ionic density results in the higher adsorption efficiency.
To further improve the accessibility of the active sites, another
new CON material (CON-LDU5) was synthesized by employing
a hard template. CON-LDU5 exhibited a larger specific
surface area than CON-LDU4, with clearly enhanced adsorption
efficiency. Finally, CON-LDU5 was used to capture CrO4
2– ions in water with fast adsorption kinetics
(k
2 = 0.0328 g mg–1 min–1) and high adsorption capacity (369 mg g–1).