Rigid molecular foams

This is the final report of a three-year, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Organic analogues to inorganic zeolites would be a significant step forward in engineered porous materials and would provide advantages in range, selectivity, tailorability, and processing. Rigid molecular foams or {open_quotes}organic zeolites{close_quotes} would not be crystalline materials and could be tailored over a broader range of pore sizes and volumes. A novel process for preparing hypercrosslinked polymeric foams has been developed via a Friedel-Crafts polycondensation reaction. A series of rigid hypercrosslinked foams have been prepared using simple rigid polyaromatic hydrocarbons including benzene, biphenyl, m-terphenyl, diphenylmethane, and polystyrene, with dichloroxylene (DCX) as the pore size. After drying the foams are robust and rigid. Densities of the resulting foams can range from 0.15 g/cc to 0.75 g/cc. Nitrogen adsorption studies have shown that by judiciously selecting monomers and the crosslinking agent along with the level of crosslinking and the cure time of the resulting gel, the pore size, pore size distribution, and the total surface area of the foam can be tailored. Surface areas range from 160 to 1,200 m{sup 2}/g with pore sizes ranging from 6 {angstrom} to 2,000 {angstrom}