Issue 16, 2013
From the journal:

RSC Advances

Impregnation of imidazole functionalized polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane in polymer electrolyte membrane for elevated temperature fuel cells

Fangfang Zhang,a   Zhengkai Tu,b   Jun Yu,b   Houbin Li,a   Chi Huangc  and  Haining Zhang*b  

* Corresponding authors

a School of Printing and Packaging, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China

b State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
E-mail: haining.zhang@whut.edu.cn
Fax: +86 27 87879468

c College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

Abstract

Imidazole functionalized polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (ImPOSS) is synthesized and introduced into a polymer electrolyte membrane for elevated temperature applications. Aggregates of ImPOSS containing 30–40 blocks of POSS cages are observed. The synthesized ImPOSS are well distributed in the hybrid membrane without further aggregation during the membrane formation process. The resulting hybrid membrane exhibits strong Coulombic interaction between sulfonic acid groups on Nafion and imidazole moieties on ImPOSS, leading to increased glass transition temperature and improved thermal stability of the membranes. Under anhydrous conditions, Vogel–Tamman–Fulcher type temperature-dependent proton conductivity is observed, suggesting that structural reorganization of incorporated imidazole moieties dominates the long-range proton transfer in the hybrid membrane. The anhydrous proton conductivity of hybrid membranes containing 35 wt% of ImPOSS reaches 0.0256 S cm−1 at 140 °C. The output voltage of a single cell assembled from the hybrid membrane is observed to be 0.41 V at 600 mA cm−2 under 120 °C and 25% relative humidity using hydrogen and oxygen as reaction gases. The results show the potential applicability of ImPOSS-Nafion hybrid membranes for elevated polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells.

Graphical abstract: Impregnation of imidazole functionalized polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane in polymer electrolyte membrane for elevated temperature fuel cells

About
Cited by
Related
Download options Please wait...

Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C3RA40640G
Article type
Paper
Submitted
18 Oct 2012
Accepted
07 Feb 2013
First published
08 Feb 2013

RSC Adv., 2013,3, 5438-5446

Permissions

Request permissions

Impregnation of imidazole functionalized polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane in polymer electrolyte membrane for elevated temperature fuel cells

F. Zhang, Z. Tu, J. Yu, H. Li, C. Huang and H. Zhang, RSC Adv., 2013, 3, 5438 DOI: 10.1039/C3RA40640G

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements