Porous organic polymers (POPs) are porous materials consisting of monomers linked by irreversible covalent bonds, are thermally and chemically stable, and can contain functional backbones at high density. Therefore, POPs are suitable for broad applications such as adsorbents and energy storage materials. Typically, POPs have been synthesized via chemical polymerization using metal catalysts or oxidants and electropolymerization, although residual impurities and nonuniformity of the material remain significant challenges. This perspective outlines the characteristics of conventional polymerization methods and then introduces a promising method where iodine serves as an oxidant or catalyst (iodine-based chemical polymerization) to synthesize high-purity POPs. Finally, based on the inherent functionalities of POPs─revealed for the first time through the high-purity synthesis─the future outlook is provided.
Okubo et al. (Wed,) studied this question.