Highly Hydroxide-Conductive Nanostructured Solid Electrolyte via Pre-Designed Ionic Nanoaggregates
作者：Guangwei He, Zongyu Li, Mingzhao Xu, Shaofei Wang, Jing Zhao, Zhen Li, Xinlin Yang, Zhongyi Jiang*
關鍵字：solid electrolytes, alkaline fuel cells, ionic nanoaggregates, hydroxide conductivity, membrane
論文來源：期刊
具體來源：ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 9 (34), 28346-28354 (2017). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b05400
發表時間：2017年
The creation of interconnected ionic nanoaggregates within solid
electrolytes is a crucial yet challenging task for fabricating high-performance alkaline
fuel cells. Herein, we present a facile and generic approach to embedding ionic
nanoaggregates via pre-designed hybrid core-shell nanoarchitecture within nonionic
polymer membranes: i) synthesizing core-shell nanoparticles composed of
SiO2/densely quaternary ammonium functionalized polystyrene. Due to the spatial
confinement effect of the SiO2 “core”, the abundant hydroxide-conducting groups are
locally aggregated in the functionalized polystyrene “shell”, forming ionic
nanoaggregates bearing intrinsic continuous ion channels; ii) Embedding these ionic
nanoaggregates (20-70 wt%) into polysulfone matrix to construct interconnected
hydroxide-conducting channels. The chemical composition, physical morphology,
amount and distribution of the ionic nanoaggregates are facilely regulated, leading to
highly connected ion channels with high effective ion mobility comparable to that of
the state-of-the-art Nafion. The resulting membranes display strikingly high
hydroxide conductivity (188.1 mS cm-1 at 80 oC), which is one of the highest results
to date. The membranes are also imparted high mechanical properties. The
independent manipulation of the conduction function and the non-conduction function
by the ionic nanoaggregates and the nonionic polymer matrix, opens a new avenue
free of microphase separation to designing high-performance solid electrolytes for
diverse application realms.