Hailan Han,Hai Qiang Li,Meiyu Liu,Lishuang Xu,Jingmei Xu,Shuang Wang,Hongzhe Ni,Zhe Wang
A series of novel organic-inorganic crosslinked hybrid proton exchange membranes were prepared using sulfonated poly(arylene ether ketone sulfone) polymers containing carboxyl groups (C-SPAEKS), (3-aminopropyl)-triethoxysilane (KH550), and tetraethoxysilane (TEOS). KH550 acted as a “bridge” after reacting with carboxyl and sulfonic groups of C-SPAEKS to form covalent and ionic crosslinked structure between the C-SPAEKS and SiO 2 phase. The crosslinked hybrid membranes (C-SPAEKS/K-SiO 2 ) were characterized by FT-IR spectroscopy, TGA , and electrochemistry , etc. The thermal stability, mechanical properties and proton conductivity of the crosslinked hybrid membranes were improved by the presence of both crosslinked structure and inorganic phase. The proton conductivity of C-SPAEKS/K-SiO 2 -8 was recorded as 0.110 S cm − 1 , higher than that of Nafion ® (0.028 S cm − 1 ) at 120 °C. Moreover, the methanol permeability of the C-SPAEKS/K-SiO 2 -8 was measured as 3.86 × 10 −7 cm 2 s − 1 , much lower than that of Nafion ® 117 membranes (29.4 × 10 −7 cm 2 s − 1 ) at 25 °C.
In this paper, the zwitterion ADPS was modified on UiO-66-COOH by amidation reaction, and the functional UiO-66-ADPS that was produced was added to the matrix of sulfonated poly(aryl ether ketone sulfone) (SPAEKS), and the series of composite membranes of SPAEKS-UiO-66-ADPS (abbreviated as SPAEKS-U-A-X%) were successfully prepared. The UiO-66-ADPS and the series of composite membranes were characterized and evaluated. The composite membranes created exhibit excellent electrochemical performance, as well as superior water uptake and mechanical properties. Among them, at 90 °C, the proton conductivity of SPAEKS-U-A-0.75% reached 268.31 mS cm -1 , and the power density was 1553.10 mW/cm 2 , which was much higher than that of the SPAEKS membrane (302.65 mW/cm 2 ). The results show that UiO-66-ADPS significantly improved the electrochemical performance of the PEMs.