Porous organic polymers with defined morphologies: Synthesis, assembly, and emerging applications

Porous organic polymers (POPs) have well-defined porosities, high surface areas, and attractive surface chemical functionalities. Because of these properties, POPs and their derivatives, including their pyrolysis (carbonaceous) products, have broad applications in catalysis, absorption, separation, sensing, biomedical engineering, and energy storage/conversion. In particular, both the porosity and morphology of porous materials have crucial impacts on their performance. The controlled synthesis of morphological defined POPs via various assembly approaches offers an effective route to prepare novel nanomaterials with broad application scope in the above-mentioned fields. Therefore, a summary of recent research related to POPs will stimulate researchers to explore this field at a deeper level. This review provides a summary and analysis of progress in the last decade toward the development of morphologically controlled POPs. Established works and recent progress in the synthesis of these materials are first reviewed, followed by the systematic discussion of the methodologies and key parameters for the fabrication of diverse morphology-controlled POPs. The various emerging applications afforded by the POPs are summarized, and special attention is paid to the relationship between the morphology and performance of POP materials. Finally, current challenges in the development of application-driven morphological control are addressed, revealing areas for future investigation. We hope that this review will encourage future investigation of POPs with defined morphologies as well as exploration on hitherto unknown characteries of the morphology derived innovative applications.