The potential of anion exchange membrane (AEM) fuel cells to provide inexpensive compact power from a wider variety of fuels than is possible with a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell, has continued to drive the research interest in this area. Alkaline catalysis in fuel cells has been demonstrated with non-precious metal catalysts, and with a variety of fuels beyond H2 and methanol. Alkaline fuel cells (AFCs), based on aqueous solutions of KOH, have serious drawbacks associated with system complexity and carbonate formation. Anion exchange membrane (AEMs) fuel cells have a number of advantages over both PEM fuel cells and traditional AFCs; however, although anionic conductivity in AEMs can be comparable to PEMs the chemical stability of membrane attached cations in hydroxide is still not always sufficient for practical applications. After much experimental development we believe that we have perfected a method whereby AEMs with moderate stability can be converted to the hydroxyl form under CO2 free conditions. Furthermore, our method completely removes residual salt from the films under study that can lead to erroneously high hydroxide conductivity values. Here we report data for a number of AEMs with hydroxide as the counter ion, and begin to correlate their performance with structure and chemistry. The real issue is water transport; water is both a product and a reactant in these systems and wet cations are much more stable than dry. So we will also present data on water tarsport in these films. Finally as some of these films have promising properties we will present data for H2/O2 fuel cells run under standard conditions. In this talk we foccus on a thermally cross-linked, and chemically robust poly(2,6 dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide)-b-poly(vinylbenzyltrimethylammonium) diblock copolymer and discus its properties and perfrmance in a H2/O2 fuel cell.

Thermally cross-linked, chemically robust poly(2,6 dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide)-b-poly(vinylbenzyltrimethylammonium) diblock copolymer anion-exchange membrane for fuel cell applications

251st National Meeting (2016)

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