Just over a century ago, Lewis published his seminal work on what became known as the covalent bond, which has since occupied a central role in the theory of making organic molecules. With the advent of covalent organic frameworks (COFs), the chemistry of the covalent bond was extended to two- and three-dimensional frameworks. Here, organic molecules are linked by covalent bonds to yield crystalline, porous COFs from light elements (boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and silicon) that are characterized by high architectural and chemical robustness. This discovery paved the way for carrying out chemistry on frameworks without losing their porosity or crystallinity, and in turn achieving designed properties in materials. The recent union of the covalent and the mechanical bond in the COF provides the opportunity for making woven structures that incorporate flexibility and dynamics into frameworks.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/355/6328/eaal1585.full.pdf

The atom, the molecule, and the covalent organic framework

This article provides an up-to-date perspective on the use of anion-exchange membranes in fuel cells, electrolysers, redox flow batteries, reverse electrodialysis cells, and bioelectrochemical systems (e.g. microbial fuel cells). The aim is to highlight key concepts, misconceptions, the current state-of-the-art, technological and scientific limitations, and the future challenges (research priorities) related to the use of anion-exchange membranes in these energy technologies. All the references that the authors deemed relevant, and were available on the web by the manuscript submission date (30th April 2014), are included.

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Anion-exchange membranes in electrochemical energy systems

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are a class of crystalline porous organic polymers with permanent porosity and highly ordered structures. Unlike other polymers, a significant feature of COFs is that they are structurally predesignable, synthetically controllable, and functionally manageable. In principle, the topological design diagram offers geometric guidance for the structural tiling of extended porous polygons, and the polycondensation reactions provide synthetic ways to construct the predesigned primary and high-order structures. Progress over the past decade in the chemistry of these two aspects undoubtedly established the base of the COF field. By virtue of the availability of organic units and the diversity of topologies and linkages, COFs have emerged as a new field of organic materials that offer a powerful molecular platform for complex structural design and tailor-made functional development. Here we target a comprehensive review of the COF field, provide a historic overview of the chemistry of the COF field, survey the advances in the topology design and synthetic reactions, illustrate the structural features and diversities, scrutinize the development and potential of various functions through elucidating structure-function correlations based on interactions with photons, electrons, holes, spins, ions, and molecules, discuss the key fundamental and challenging issues that need to be addressed, and predict the future directions from chemistry, physics, and materials perspectives.

Covalent Organic Frameworks: Design, Synthesis, and Functions.

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are a class of crystalline porous polymer that allows the atomically precise integration of organic units into extended structures with periodic skeletons and ordered nanopores. One important feature of COFs is that they are designable; that is, the geometry and dimensions of the building blocks can be controlled to direct the topological evolution of structural periodicity. The diversity of building blocks and covalent linkage topology schemes make COFs an emerging materials platform for structural control and functional design. Indeed, COF architectures offer confined molecular spaces for the interplay of photons, excitons, electrons, holes, ions and guest molecules, thereby exhibiting unique properties and functions. In this Review, we summarize the major progress in the field of COFs and recent achievements in developing new design principles and synthetic strategies. We highlight cutting-edge functional designs and identify fundamental issues that need to be addressed in conjunction with future research directions from chemistry, physics and materials perspectives. Covalent organic frameworks are crystalline porous polymers with precisely ordered polygon architectures. In this Review we summarize recent advances in the design principles and synthetic reactions, highlight the current status in structural construction and functionality design, and predict challenging issues and future directions.

Covalent organic frameworks: a materials platform for structural and functional designs

Linking organic molecules by covalent bonds into extended solids typically generates amorphous, disordered materials. The ability to develop strategies for obtaining crystals of such solids is of interest because it opens the way for precise control of the geometry and functionality of the extended structure, and the stereochemical orientation of its constituents. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are a new class of porous covalent organic structures whose backbone is composed entirely of light elements (B, C, N, O, Si) that represent a successful demonstration of how crystalline materials of covalent solids can be achieved. COFs are made by combination of organic building units covalently linked into extended structures to make crystalline materials. The attainment of crystals is done by several techniques in which a balance is struck between the thermodynamic reversibility of the linking reactions and their kinetics. This success has led to the expansion of COF materials to include organic units linked by these strong covalent bonds: B-O, C-N, B-N, and B-O-Si. Since the organic constituents of COFs, when linked, do not undergo significant change in their overall geometry, it has been possible to predict the structures of the resulting COFs, and this advantage has facilitated their characterization using powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) techniques. It has also allowed for the synthesis of COF structures by design and for their formation with the desired composition, pore size, and aperture. In practice, the modeled PXRD pattern for a given expected COF is compared with the experimental one, and depending on the quality of the match, this is used as a starting point for solving and then refining the crystal structure of the target COF. These characteristics make COFs an attractive class of new porous materials. Accordingly, they have been used as gas storage materials for energy applications, solid supports for catalysis, and optoelectronic devices. A large and growing library of linkers amenable to the synthesis of COFs is now available, and new COFs and topologies made by reticular synthesis are being reported. Much research is also directed toward the development of new methods of linking organic building units to generate other crystalline COFs. These efforts promise not only new COF chemistry and materials, but also the chance to extend the precision of molecular covalent chemistry to extended solids.

Chemistry of Covalent Organic Frameworks

Three-dimensional porous crystalline polyimide covalent organic frameworks (termed PI-COFs) have been synthesized. These PI-COFs feature non- or interpenetrated structures that can be obtained by choosing tetrahedral building units of different sizes. Both PI-COFs show high thermal stability (>450 °C) and surface area (up to 2403 m2 g–1). They also show high loading and good release control for drug delivery applications.

3D Porous Crystalline Polyimide Covalent Organic Frameworks for Drug Delivery

Covalent organic frameworks are a potentially useful class of materials, although they are currently synthesized using relatively few reactions. Here, the authors show that the imidization reaction can be used to prepare a series of large pore polyimide frameworks with high surface area and thermal stability.

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Designed synthesis of large-pore crystalline polyimide covalent organic frameworks

One promising approach to reduce the cost of fuel cell systems is to develop hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells (HEMFCs), which open up the possibility of platinum-group-metal-free catalysts and low-cost bipolar plates. However, scalable alkaline polyelectrolytes (hydroxide exchange membranes and hydroxide exchange ionomers), a key component of HEMFCs, with desired properties are currently unavailable, which presents a major barrier to the development of HEMFCs. Here we show hydroxide exchange membranes and hydroxide exchange ionomers based on poly(aryl piperidinium) (PAP) that simultaneously possess adequate ionic conductivity, chemical stability, mechanical robustness, gas separation and selective solubility. These properties originate from the combination of the piperidinium cation and the rigid ether-bond-free aryl backbone. A low-Pt membrane electrode assembly with a Ag-based cathode using PAP materials showed an excellent peak power density of 920 mW cm−2 and operated stably at a constant current density of 500 mA cm−2 for 300 h with H2/CO2-free air at 95 °C. A key challenge for hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells is the development of membranes with both high ionic conductivity and mechanical strength. Here the authors report a high-performance family of poly(aryl piperidinium) membranes enabling promising durability and power density.

Poly(aryl piperidinium) membranes and ionomers for hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells

An Efficient Direct Ammonia Fuel Cell for Affordable Carbon-Neutral Transportation

Tertiary sulfonium is introduced as the cationic functional group for hydroxide exchange membranes (HEMs). The methoxyl-substituted triarylsulfonium functionalized HEM (i.e., PSf-MeOTASOH) exhibits excellent thermal stability (TOD: 242 °C), acceptable hydroxide conductivity (15.4 mS cm−1 at 20 °C), and good chemical stability. Our work shows that, similar to nitrogen and phosphorus, a sulfur element with designed side groups can also be used to construct HEM cationic functional groups.

Junhua Wang

Papers

3D Porous Crystalline Polyimide Covalent Organic Frameworks for Drug Delivery

Designed synthesis of large-pore crystalline polyimide covalent organic frameworks

Poly(aryl piperidinium) membranes and ionomers for hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells

An Efficient Direct Ammonia Fuel Cell for Affordable Carbon-Neutral Transportation

Tertiary sulfonium as a cationic functional group for hydroxide exchange membranes