Evaluation of different potassium salts as activators for hierarchically porous carbons and their applications in CO adsorption.

KOH is one of the most widely used activators for the synthesis of highly porous carbon. However, the strong causticity of KOH could cause serious equipment damage and safety issues at high temperature. In the current work, we presented the synthesis of porous carbons with large surface area using four different potassium salts (CHCOOK, KHCO, KCO, and KCO·HO) as mild but effective activators.

Thieno[3,4-]pyrrole-4,6-dione-based conjugated polymers for organic solar cells.

Conjugated polymers consisting of electron-rich and electron-deficient units as alternative structures have played important roles in the field of organic solar cells (OSCs). A thieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6-dione (TPD) unit as an electron-deficient unit has been used to construct conjugated polymers for application in fullerene and non-fullerene based OSCs. TPD-based monomers can be simply prepared and TPD-polymers can be synthesized via environmentally friendly direct (hetero)arylation polymerization, providing a possibility for large quantity preparation.