Preparation and characterization of self-crosslinked organic/inorganic proton exchange membranes

✍ Scribed by Shuangling Zhong; Xuejun Cui; Sen Dou; Wencong Liu

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 445 KB
• Volume: 195
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-7753
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2009.12.125

✦ Synopsis

A series of silicon-containing sulfonated polystyrene/acrylate (Si-sPS/A) nanoparticles are successfully synthesized via simple emulsion polymerization method. The Si-sPS/A latexes show good film-forming capability and the self-crosslinked organic/inorganic proton exchange membranes are prepared by pouring the Si-sPS/A nanoparticle latexes into glass plates and drying at 60 • C for 10 h and 120 • C for 2 h. The potential of the membranes in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) is characterized preliminarily by studying their thermal stability, ion-exchange capacity, water uptake, methanol diffusion coefficient, proton conductivity and selectivity (proton conductivity/methanol diffusion coefficient). The results indicate that these membranes possess excellent thermal stability and methanol barrier due to the existence of self-crosslinked silica network. In addition, the proton conductivity of the membranes is in the range of 10 -3 -10 -2 S cm -1 and all the membranes show much higher selectivity in comparison with Nafion ® 117. These results suggest that the self-crosslinked organic/inorganic proton exchange membranes are particularly promising in DMFC applications.