High-Performance Polymers Bearing Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Chromorphores for Optoelectronic and Energy Storage Applications

Over a century of breakthroughs in high-performance polymer science has established the groundwork for today's advanced material engineering. Conventional aromatic polyamides and polyimides remain prime exemplars in this domain, heavily relied upon in defense, aerospace, microelectronics, and industrial manufacturing due to their rare combination of high tensile strength, stiffness, toughness, thermal endurance, chemical stability, and low dielectric constants. To endow these robust frameworks with optoelectronic functionality, we incorporated representative polycyclic aromatic fluorophores such as naphthalene, phenanthrene, and pyrene—directly into the polymer main chains. The resulting materials preserved their signature thermal stability while gaining excellent solubility in polar organic solvents, alongside intriguing optical features such as excimer-induced emission behavior and selective metal-ion sensing capabilities. Furthermore, by covalently anchoring electroactive organic units onto two-dimensional carbon materials via amide bonds, we constructed 3D porous composite networks that substantially boost the performance of electrochemical energy storage systems, including lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors.