H₃PO₄-Imbibed Three-Dimensional Polyacrylamide/Polyacrylamide Hydrogel as a High-Temperature Proton Exchange Membrane with Excellent Acid Retention

Author(s)

Qunwei Tang
Guoging Qian, University of South Carolina - ColumbiaFollow
Kevin Huang, University of South Carolina - ColumbiaFollow

Document Type

Article

Abstract

We herein report the use of polyacrylamide/polyacrylamide interpenetrating polymer network (PAM/PAM IPN) hydrogel as a matrix to imbibe proton conducting H₃PO₄, forming a robust proton exchange membrane (PEM) suitable for high-temperature PEM fuel cells by combining excellent acid retention, simple synthesis, and low cost. Its extraordinary ability to absorb large quantity of aqueous solution is fully utilized to achieve high H₃PO₄ loading, showing a proton conductivity of 0.0833 S cm−1 at 183 °C in dry air. The synthesized membrane also shows excellent acid retention even under mechanical load and high humidity. These profound advantages along with simple and low-cost synthesis promise the new membrane to be a strong candidate as a high-temperature PEM.

Publication Info

Published in RSC Advances, Volume 2, Issue 27, 2012, pages 10238-10244.

Rights

©RSC Advances (2012), Royal Society of Chemistry.

This article cannot be redistributed or further made available.

This article was first published by the Royal Society of Chemistry and can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C2RA21485G

Tang, Q., Qian, G., & Huang, K. (2012). H₃PO₄-Imbibed Three-Dimensional Polyacrylamide/Polyacrylamide Hydrogel as a High-Temperature Proton Exchange Membrane with Excellent Acid Retention. RSC Advances, 2 (27), 10238 - 10244. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C2RA21485G