Proton conducting nanocomposite membranes for high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

POLY 30

Sarah M. White, smwhi0@student.umass.edu1, Sergio Granados-Focil, granados.sergio@mail.pse.umass.edu1, Richard C. Woudenberg, woody@mail.pse.umass.edu1, Ozgur Yavuzcetin, yavuzcet@physics.umass.edu2, Mark T. Tuominen, tuominen@physics.umass.edu2, and E. Bryan Coughlin, coughlin@mail.pse.umass.edu1. (1) Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 120 Governors Drive, Amherst, MA 01003, (2) Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts, 666 North Pleasant, Amherst, MA 01003
Nano-composite proton conducting membranes were obtained by introducing two different proton conducting materials, a rigid-rod sulfonated polyphenylene or a flexible triazole grafted polysiloxane into the cylindrical pores of commercially available nano-porous alumina membranes. Nano-confinement resulted in conductivity increases as the pore diameter decreased for the rigid-rod materials. The increase in conductivity is attributed to orientation of the rigid-rod chains within the nano-pores, as confirmed by X-ray diffraction. Confinement within the alumina nano-pores did not have any appreciable effect in the proton conductivity of the polysiloxanes, suggesting that the flexible coils might be too small to experience any orientation within relatively large nano-pores with diameters ranging from 20 nm to 200 nm. It is expected that the use of larger molecular weight flexible polysiloxanes will produce an effect similar to that observed in the nano-confinement of the rigid-rod polyphenylene. This is a promising pathway towards development of mechanically stable and highly conductive membranes.
 

Undergraduate Research in Polymer Science
8:15 AM-12:00 PM, Sunday, April 6, 2008 Hilton New Orleans Riverside -- Grand Salon 16, Oral

Division of Polymer Chemistry

The 235th ACS National Meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 6-10, 2008