Noncovalent and covalent double assembly: unravelling a unified mechanism for the tubular shape evolution of microporous organic polymers

This work unravels the unified mechanistic principle of the tubular shape evolution of microporous organic polymers (MOPs) prepared by the Sonogashira coupling of ethynylarenes and haloarenes. Using ionic building blocks (self-templates), in situ generated salts (in situ templates), or salt additives (additive templates), tubular MOP materials could be engineered. The assembled ionic species can act as morphology templates in the covalent assembly of building blocks to form MOP tubes.