In this study, we successfully synthesized two types of meso/microporous carbon materials through the carbonization and potassium hydroxide (KOH) activation for two different kinds of hyper-crosslinked polymers of TPE-CPOP1 and TPE-CPOP2, which were synthesized by using Friedel–Crafts reaction of tetraphenylethene (TPE) monomer with or without cyanuric chloride in the presence of AlCl₃ as a catalyst. The resultant porous carbon materials exhibited the high specific area (up to 1100 m² g⁻¹), total pore volume, good thermal stability, and amorphous character based on thermogravimetric (TGA), N₂ adsoprtion/desorption, and powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) analyses. The as-prepared TPE-CPOP1 after thermal treatment at 800 °C (TPE-CPOP1-800) displayed excellent CO₂ uptake performance (1.74 mmol g⁻¹ at 298 K and 3.19 mmol g⁻¹ at 273 K). Furthermore, this material possesses a high specific capacitance of 453 F g⁻¹ at 5 mV s⁻¹ comparable to others porous carbon materials with excellent columbic efficiencies for 10,000 cycle at 20 A g⁻¹.

In this paper, carbon aerogel (CA)-polyaniline (PANI) composites were prepared and first applied in the study of H₂S gas sensing. Here, 1 and 3 wt% of as-obtained CA powder were blended with PANI to produce composites, which are denoted by PANI-CA-1 and PANI-CA-3, respectively. For the H₂S gas-sensing studies, the interdigitated electrode (IDE) was spin-coated by performing PANI and PANI-CA composite dispersion. The H₂S gas-sensing properties were studied in terms of the sensor’s sensitivity, selectivity and repeatability. IDE coated with PANI-CA composites, as compared with pristine PANI, achieved higher sensor sensitivity, higher selectivity and good repeatability. Moreover, composites that contain higher loading of CA (e.g., 3 wt%) perform better than composites with lower loading of CA. At 1 ppm, PANI-CA-3 displayed increased sensitivity of 452% at relative humidity of 60% with a fast average response time of 1 s compared to PANI.