3.1. Synthesis and Characterization
PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA polymers have dark and light brown powder, respectively, are insoluble in water, and have been tested for stability in various organic solvents such as dimethyl sulfoxide, tetrahydrofuran, and dichloromethane. As illustrated in
Scheme 1, the PANs were synthesized utilizing a one-step polycondensation procedure at 175 °C and under an Ar atmosphere to produce hyper-cross-linked polymers.
Scheme 1.
Synthesis of PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA.
Scheme 1.
Synthesis of PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA.
FTIR analysis investigated the chemical structure and functional groups of raw materials and polymers, as depicted in
Figure 1. Melamine has bands associated with the NH
2 stretching frequency at 3470 cm
-1 and 3420 cm
-1. The spectra revealed that the C–O stretching of the carbonyl group of aldehyde monomers at 1678 cm
-1 and 1622 cm
-1, respectively, disappeared in the polymer structure, indicating that the aldehyde group of monomers and melamine in polymer networks were transformed entirely [
1]. Triazine rings, characteristic bands of PAN-BrNA, appeared at 1513 and 1404 cm
-1 in
Figure 1 (a), and similar bands at 1541 and 1472 cm
-1 appeared in
Figure 1 (b) attributed to the triazine stretching vibrations for PAN-HNA. The characteristic peaks of C−N exist at 1329 and 1348 cm
-1 for PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA, respectively. PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA have C–H stretching vibrations at 2929 and 2969 cm
-1, respectively [
12]. For PAN-BrNA, The aminal linkage stretching vibration occurs at 3440 and 1197 cm
-1, and the band at 1046 cm
-1 is due to the stretching vibrations of the C–Br bond [
13]. The O–H characteristic peaks are energetically overlapped with N–H, resulting in one broad peak of 3414 cm
-1 in PAN-HNA spectra [
12].
In order to further verify the PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA network structure, the solid-state
13C NMR spectrums were recorded, as shown in
Figure 2 (a, b), respectively. The spectrum of PAN-BrNA exhibits triazine ring resonance at 166 ppm. A strong signal appeared at 158 ppm related to the triazine ring carbons attached to the aminal linkage (–NH–CH–NH–). Furthermore, the benzene ring aromatic carbon shows a resonance at 130 ppm. The chemical shift revealed at 50 ppm is related to the aminal linkage formation [14, 15]. The appearance of a signal at 41.5 ppm is assigned to the presence of solvent DMSO. For
PAN-HNA, a characteristic carbon triazine ring signal appeared at 167.7 ppm. The resonance that appeared at 153.8 ppm is attributed to the aromatic carbon of the phenolic hydroxyl group. The chemical shift at 131 ppm can be assigned to the carbon signal from benzene rings. Moreover, the broad peak centered at 57.6 ppm is given to the methylene group originating in aminal linkage [
16]. Previous research has shown that DMSO decomposes at high temperatures, resulting in the formation of formaldehyde. The condensation interaction with the free amino groups of melamine results in an ether linkage and methylol groups. As a result, a signal appeared at 69.1 and 74.5 ppm associated with the presence of methylol groups and methylene groups in ether linkage, respectively. Furthermore, the signal at 15.7 ppm is related to the C–S group of DMSO [
17].
The occurrence of distinct broad peaks around the region of 2θ = 20˚ verified the disordered amorphous character of both PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA in the XRD pattern, as shown in
Figure 3 (a, b) [
18].
A scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to study the morphology of the synthesized PANs. The polyaminals lack the usual spherical morphology of porous polymers, and agglomerated shapes appeared in the images, as shown in
Figure 4 (a, b), similar to those found in earlier reported melamine-based porous polymers [
19]. The EDX analysis, as depicted in
Figure 4 (c, d), confirms the synthesis of PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA, respectively. The elemental analysis showed that PAN-BrNA consists of (39.19%) carbon, (29.13%) nitrogen, (22.65%) oxygen, and bromine (9.02%). Moreover, PAN-HNA contains (52.50%) carbon, (29.23%) nitrogen, and (18.26%) oxygen, indicating the production of both polyaminals networks.
A TGA study was utilized to determine the thermal stability of PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA, as shown in
Figure 5 (a, b), respectively. The networks of PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA demonstrate a first degradation at temperatures 38-140 °C and 44-88 °C, with weight loss of 6% and 2.7%, respectively, caused by loss of solvent. PAN-BrNA exhibits main weight loss at temperatures of 140-412 °C. The thermogram shows that the polymer decomposes in three separate steps. In addition, the primary weight loss of PAN-HNA appeared at temperatures between 227-408 °C. The prior weight loss of the PANs owing to aminal linkage cleavage and the decomposition of triazine polymer networks begins at temperatures above 400 °C [
20]. The polymer networks hold up their stability to 292 °C and 356 °C for PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA, respectively.
Nitrogen sorption at 77 K was used to investigate the surface and porosity properties of PANs. As shown in
Figure 6 (a), PAN-BrNA did not exhibit nitrogen adsorption, which implied the non-porous nature of the polymer networks as reported in previously synthesized PANs [18, 20]. As demonstrated in
Figure 6 (b), PAN-HNA appears to contain mesopores that can be classified as type-IV isotherms; furthermore, PAN-HNA has an H2-type hysteresis loop related to more complicated pore structures and thin necks accompanied by broader bodies
-ink bottle pores caused by pore-blocking/percolation in a narrow range of pore necks or cavitation-induced evaporation [21, 22]. A significant rise in nitrogen consumption in the (P/P
0 < 0.01) region of very low pressure indicates micropores in the structure. The values of BET surface area (S
BET), micropore surface area (S
micro), micropore volume (V
micro), and total pore volume (V
total) of the polyaminals are illustrated in
Table 1. The Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of PAN-BrNA is calculated to be 16.6990 m
2/g, and the total pore volume is 0.097320 cm
3/g.
Figure 6 (c) depicts the calculated non-local density functional theory (NLDFT) pore size distribution, revealing that most pores in PAN-BrNA are 3.41 nm. The surface area and porous behavior of PAN-BrNA might be related to the bromine atoms, which occupy space and reduce the specific surface area along with the porous parameter [
24]. PAN-HNA BET surface area has been determined to be 716.7568 m
2/g. The t-plot external surface area is 608.9677 m
2/g, demonstrating the occurrence of 107.7890 m
2/g microporous channels in the PAN-HNA structure.
Figure 6 (d) depicts pore size distribution, showing that PAN-HNA pores are mainly distributed between 0.62 and 10.13 nm. In addition, PAN-HNA has a total pore volume of 0.729586 cm
3/g and a micropore volume of 0.042571 cm
3/g. The marked rise in surface area and decrease in porous parameters observed when compared to unfunctionalized PAN-NA previously reported could be attributed to the hydroxyl groups of PAN-HNA on the benzene occupying the partial pore space and the interactions between functional groups resulting in enhanced chain stacking [11, 19, 24].
3.2. CO2 adsorption
The CO
2 isotherm at 273 K was determined up to 1 bar for measuring the CO
2 adsorption-desorption performance of both PANs, as demonstrated in
Figure 7. PAN-BrNA CO
2 uptake was determined to be between 0.00628 and 4.42786 cm
3/g; similarly, PAN-HNA uptake ranged between 0.27256 and 47.55121 cm
3/g. The superior performance of melamine-based polymers could be attributed to the excellent interaction of polarizable CO
2 molecules with the polymer structure via dipole-quadrupole interactions and the constructed microporosity of polymers with a larger BET surface area [
26]. For the reasons stated, PAN-HNA adsorbed more CO
2 than PAN-BrNA, which could be attributed to its larger surface area and the presence of substantial content of micropores, which increases the adsorption of small gas molecules. [21, 11]. The hydroxyl-functionalized PAN-HNA had a lower CO
2 adsorption than the previously reported unmodified PAN-NA, which had a higher uptake of up to 67.9 cm
3/g [
25]. According to Zhang
et al., the hydroxyl-functionalized polymer MOP-1 has a lower CO
2 absorption than the unmodified polymer, and the low –OH content likely reduces CO
2 adsorption [
27]. The noticeable hysteresis loops of CO
2 isotherms within PAN-BrNA and PAN-HNA suggested that chemical adsorption may occur along with physical adsorption.
Table 2 compares the CO
2 adsorption of PAN-HNA to other reported hydroxyl-functionalized melamine-based polymers. PAN-HNA has a higher CO
2 uptake than MOP-1 and MOP-2 owing to its increased surface area and microporosity content. Because of MOP-3 higher OH content, the dipolar or quadrupolar reaction between the oxygen atom of –OH and CO
2 molecules improved the polymer CO
2 capture capabilities [
27]. The more extensive content of micropores in PAN-HP is beneficial for the adsorption of small gas molecules such as CO
2, resulting in enhanced CO
2 capture among all previously reported hydroxyl-functionalized melamine-based POPs [
11].