Poly(arylene piperidine)s with phosphoric acid doping as high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane for durable, high-performance fuel cells

By Huijuan Bai, Hanqing Peng, Yan Xiang, Jin Zhang, Haining Wang, Shanfu Lu, L. Zhuang. 2019

139 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The properties of high temperature polymer electrolyte membranes (HT-PEMs) are determined directly by the polymer matrix with phosphoric acid (PA) doping. Here, new polymer materials based on poly (arylene piperidine)s (PAPs) are prepared by one-step polymerization as PA absorbing matrix for HT-PEM fuel cells (HT-PEMFCs) application. The PAPs show excellent thermal stability and high glass transition temperature. Among PAPs, PA doped poly (N-methyl-piperidine-co-p-terphenyl) (PPT/PA) shows a high proton conductivity of 96.0 mS cm−1 at 180 °C without humidification and an excellent tensile strength of 12 MPa, which is much better than that of PA doped commercial poly [2,2’-(p-oxydiphenylene)-5,5′-benzimidazole] (OPBI/PA). The enhancement on conductivity of PPT/PA is attributed to the formation of micro-phase separation. A single cell based on PPT/PA membrane presents outstanding performance with a maximum power density of 1220.2 mW cm−2 with H2/O2 feeding under 0.15 MPa backpressure in cathode at 180 °C, which is 1.85 times of that with OPBI/PA membrane (660.8 mW cm−2). Furthermore, a H2/air single cell with PPT/PA shows excellent stability at a constant current density of 120 mAcm−2 and 150 °C for 1600 h. This work indicates PAPs (especially, PPT) are a promising PA doping polymer matrix for high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells application.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/58fcee06d07c306f69b686605d66b581d0ba3d6a