Grafting free radical scavengers onto polyarylethersulfone backbones for superior chemical stability of high temperature polymer membrane electrolytes
By Wang, Jin; Dai, Yu; Wan, Ruiying; Wei, Wei; Xu, Shicheng; Zhai, Fuheng; He, Ronghuan
Published in Chemical Engineering Journal
Chemical Engineering Journal
2020
Abstract
The chemical durability is a critical issue to proton exchange membranes (PEMs) for using as the electrolyte in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Herein, chemically stable membranes were prepared by grafting organic free radical scavengers (R) including 2-mercapto-1-methylimidazole (MIm), 3-mercapto-1,2,4-triazole (MTz) and 2-mercaptobenzimidazole (BIm) onto backbones of polyarylethersulfone (PAES), respectively. Having a phosphoric acid (PA) doping level of around 200 wt%, the PAES-MIm and PAES-MTz membranes exhibit, separately, anhydrous proton conductivities of 78.3 and 63.3 mS cm?1 at 180