Preparation of high porous hyper-crosslinked polyanilines from polystyrene@polyaniline assisting with simultaneously crosslinking the core and shell structure, and its adsorption performance

Preparation of the high porosity of polyaniline with remarkable application performance has always challenged the material scientist. In this work, a series of hypercross-linked polyaniline with larger apparent surface area (SBET) were synthesized by using the polystyrene@polyaniline (PS@PANI) microsphere and octavinylsilsesquioxane (OVS) as the building blocks. The resulting PS-HCPs are amorphous hybrid polymers with the maximum SBET of 625 m2 g−1. Additionally, the micropore diameter of PS-HCPs is mainly concentrated at 1.4 nm while the related mesopore diameter is in the range of 3 and 10 nm. The high porosity of PS-HCPs is assigned to OVS simultaneously crosslinking the core and shell structure of PS@PANI. This strategy provides a new way for synthesis of high porosity of nanoporous polyaniline. Adsorption experiments disclose that PS-HCPs present the high adsorbed capacity of rhodamine B (RhB) with the maximum adsorbed amount of 1127.0 ± 28.9 mg g−1. The investigation of adsorption isotherm and the adsorption kinetic imply that RhB molecules adsorbed on PS-HCP-3 comply with Langmuir model and pseudo-second-order (PSO) model. Additionally, the regeneration experiment reveals that the adsorbed amount of RhB on PS-HCP-3 was 922.9 mg g−1 after three cycles, which is higher than many reported adsorbents.