Redox tunable viologen-based porous organic polymers

The use of an organic donor-acceptor polymer containing a viologen electron acceptor and triarylamine electron donor as a platform in the development of multifunctional materials is presented. The highly robust porous organic polymer (POP) system allows for exploration of the interplay between electronic and host-guest interactions in the synthesized polymers, POP-V1, which contains a redox-active triarylamine core and POP-V2, which contains a redox-inactive benzene core, where each of the redox states present can be reversibly accessed. The degree of charge transfer in addition to the H-2 and CO2 gas adsorption properties of the polymer are able to be tuned as a function of the electronic state which has important implications for the potential applications of these polymers in optical, electrochromic and solar cell devices.