Polymeric Porous Organic Cages: A Platform for Processable Catalysis and Separation

Porous organic cages (POCs) are structurally precise molecular solids with intrinsic internal cavities, but their limited processability has hindered their integration into functional materials. These materials offer highly customizable properties and demonstrate significant application potentials across various scopes such as gas storage/separation, organocatalysis, molecular recognition, etc. However, the transformation of POCs into processable polymers has rarely been explored. Herein, we present an organic synthetic strategy for constructing POCs into linearly linked cage polymers. This approach combines the advantageous features from both POCs and polymers, resulting in polymeric POC (PolyCC3-2OH) material with excellent solubility, stability, and processability. Interestingly, the incorporation and in situ reduction of gold ions within PolyCC3-2OH lead to Au@PolyCC3-2OH encapsulated with sub-2 nm gold nanoparticles, that exhibits remarkable performance in hydrogen production via alcoholysis of ammonia borane, with a TOF value of 150 min–1 and remarkable recyclability. Moreover, the spin-coated PAN-PolyCC3-2OH membrane achieved >99% rejection of Coomassie Brilliant Blue and Congo Red while maintaining exceptional stability during prolonged continuous operation during membrane separation test. These findings establish PolyPOCs as a versatile molecular-to-macroscale platform for catalysis and membrane-based separations.