The practice of site
control for functional groups to achieve better
interactions has become popular in recent years. Capitalizing on such
developments, sulfonated 5-carboxybenzotriazole (SCBTA), serving as
a new monomer that combines multiple functional groups, is grafted
onto pendant chains of poly(arylene ether ketone) (PAEK) via an amidation
reaction to fabricate a series of novel proton-exchange membranes
(N
m
A
n
-SCBTA).
The structure of the resulting membranes is confirmed by 1H NMR and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR). Transmission electron
microscopy (TEM) and small-angle X-ray spectroscopy (SAXS) analyses
reveal well-defined microphase-separated structures. Among these samples,
a membrane having an amino bisphenol monomer content of 70% (N7A3-SCBTA)
exhibits high conductivity (0.089 S·cm–1, at
90 °C), oxidative stability (95.7%), and tensile strength (65.74
MPa), while its selectivity is as high as 91.9 × 104 S·s·cm–3 at 25 °C; this value is
even more than 27 times that of recast Nafion (3.3 × 104 S·s·cm–3). These results indicate that
there is great potential for these membranes to be used in direct
methanol fuel cells (DMFCs).
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