  This paper reports on the one-pot synthesis of main-chain
imidazolium-containing polymers, some of which show unusually high thermal
stability. The imidazolium polymers were obtained by modified
Debus-Radziszewski reactions for the chain build-up from simple organic
compounds, here pyruvaldehyde, formaldehyde, acetic acid, and a variety of
diamines. The reactions were performed in aqueous media at ambient conditions,
being synthetically elegant, convenient and highly efficient. Finally, a simple
anion-metathesis reaction was conducted to replace the acetate anion with
dicyanamide, and the thermal properties of the main-chain polyimidazoliums
before and after anion exchange were studied in detail, which demonstrated
chain cross-linking by the counterion and a coupled unusually high
carbonization yield of up to 66 wt% at 900 oC.
