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Polymer synthesis toward fuel cell membrane materials
Rebeck, Nathaniel T.
Rebeck, Nathaniel T.
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2012
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2012
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2013-05-01
Abstract
Fuel cells are a promising technology that will be part of the future energy landscape. New membranes for alkaline and proton exchange membrane fuel cells are needed to improve the performance, simplify the system, and reduce cost. Polymer chemistry can be applied to develop new polymers and to assemble polymers into improved membranes that need less water, have increased performance and are less expensive, thereby removing the deficiencies of current membranes. Nucleophilic aromatic substitution polymerization typically produces thermally stable engineering polymers that can be easily functionalized. New functional monomers were developed to explore new routes to novel functional polymers. Sulfonamides were discovered as new activating groups for polymerization of high molecular weight thermooxidatively stable materials with sulfonic acid latent functionality. While the sulfonamide functional polymers could be produced, the sulfonamide group proved to be too stable to convert into a sulfonic acid after reaction. The reactivity of 2-aminophenol was investigated to search for a new class of ion conducting polymer materials. Both the amine and the phenol groups are found to be reactive in a nucleophilic aromatic substitution, however not to the extent to allow the formation of high molecular weight polymer materials. Layer-by-layer films were assembled from aqueous solutions of poly(styrene sulfonate) and trimethylammonium functionalized poly(phenylene oxide). The deposition conditions were adjusted to increase the free charge carrier content, and chloride conductivites reached almost 30 mS/cm for the best films. Block and random poly(phenylene oxide) copolymers were produced from 2,6-dimethylphenol and 2,6-diphenylphenol and the methyl substituted repeat units were functionalized with trimethylammonium bromide. The block copolymers displayed bromide conductivities up to 26 mS/cm and outperformed the random copolymers, indicating that morphology has an effect on ion transport.
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