Study On Composite Proton Exchange Membrane Based On The Phosphosilicate Glass And Sulfonated Poly(Ether Ether Ketone)

Under the milieu that energy and environment issues become moreserious, the development and popularization of fuel cells become apromising and practical solution. Of all kinds of fuel cells, proton exchangemembrane fuel cells, a star of fuel cell family, attract great attention andinvestment from scientists and investors all over the world, which brings aseries of technology breakthroughs to fuel cells and accelerates thecommercial progress of fuel cells. As one of the core components of fuelcell, proton exchange membrane (PEM) has been the research hotspot,whose properties directly influence the overall performance of PEMFC.And the commercial progress of PEMFC is determined by the price ofproton exchange membrane. Hitherto, the present PEMs are notsatisfactory in both aspects therefore it’s of great meaning to researchPEMs further.In the present study, sulfonated polymer ether ketone (SPEEK) wasselected from many low-cost non-fluorinated organic polymers to act asthe matrix of PEM. The inorganic/organic composite membranes wereprepared by compositing SPEEK and the P2O5/SiO2sol and P2O5/SiO2powder that both were fabricated via sol-gel method. And the study ofmorphology and mechanical properties as well as proton conductivity ofboth composite membranes indicates that the introduction of inorganicP2O5/SiO2can dramatically ameliorate the proton conductivity of SPEEKmembrane, itself; meanwhile, the composite membranes can maintainthe original mechanical properties of SPEEK well. The spotlight of this experiment lies in that the composite membrane,whose morphology and structures are different from that of thecomposite membrane prepared by traditional inorganic blending, wasfabricated via innovatively adding the P2O5/SiO2sol to SPEEK directly. Thesol-added-type composite membrane has obvious skeleton; and itscomprehensive performance is better than the membrane fabricated viaadding inorganics in a traditional manner when the adding amount ofinorganics is small. On the other hand, however, the rising of addingamount of inorganics will impair the dispersion of P2O5/SiO2sol, triggeringthe decline of the proton conductivity of composite membrane. For thecomposite membrane containing40wt.%P2O5/SiO2powder, itsconductivity reaches1.6x10-2s/cm, the open circuit voltage of the singlecell assembled by using this membrane0.95V and its peak powder density446mW/cm2.