Porous organic cages (POCs) have emerged as promising molecular materials for gas separation and storage due to their discrete, shape-persistent structures and accessible cavities. However, their practical application remains limited by intrinsic instability under harsh chemical environments and difficulties in processing. Here, we report a rapid and efficient interfacial strategy for the fabrication of POCs@polymer core-shell nanostructures that exhibit improved chemical robustness and molecular selectivity. Through chiral self-assembly of enantiomeric cage precursors, well-defined racemic POC particles are synthesized. A non-solvent-induced surface-aimed polymerization (NISAP) technique enables the formation of dense, conformal polyamic acid (PAA) or polyimide (PI) coatings in a single step, yielding stable, monodisperse core-shell nanostructures. These polymer shells confer exceptional acid resistance upon POC particles, as confirmed by etching and PXRD analyses, and significantly alter their pore environments, leading to enhanced selectivity in gas and vapor separation. Notably, the PAA-coated materials achieve a CO2/N2 IAST selectivity of 299.5 and a para-xylene (PX) / ortho-xylene (OX) selectivity of 11.3, which is a tenfold and fourfold improvement over the uncoated material, respectively. Our results offer a general pathway to robust hybrid molecular materials, opening new avenues for advanced separations under demanding industrial conditions.
Li et al. (Tue,) studied this question.