Triptycene-based polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) prepared via Troger's base formation

A highly gas permeable polymer with exceptional size selectivityis prepared by fusing triptycene units together via a polymerisation reaction involving Tröger's base formation. The extreme rigidity of this polymer of intrinsic microporosity (PIM-Trip-TB) facilitates gas permeability data that lie well above the benchmark 2008 Robeson upper bounds for the important O2/N2 and H2/N2 gas pairs. Indeed, as PIM-Trip-TB is a ladder polymer that is composed of only benzene rings fused together by rigid bridged bicyclic units and contains no groups that can act as rotors, its performance as a molecular sieve is likely to be approaching the optimum achievable for gas separation for a solution processablepolymer.[1]