Utilization of Water-Insoluble Carbon Nitride-Phosphotungstic Acid Hybrids in Composite Proton Exchange Membranes
Phosphotungstic acid (HPW) can retain water in proton exchange membranes to increase proton conductivity; however, its water-soluble nature limits further application. In this work, we combined HPW and graphitic carbon nitride (g-C<sub>3</sub>N<sub>4</sub>) via sintering to prepare water-insoluble hybrids (HWN), where HPW was chemically linked to g-C<sub>3</sub>N<sub>4</sub> to fix HPW. Then, HWN fillers were added to a sulfonated polyether ether ketone (SPEEK) matrix to prepare composite membranes. The conductivity of the composite membrane with 10 wt% HWN is up to 0.066 S cm<sup>-1</sup> at room temperature, which is 53% higher than that of the SPEEK control membrane (0.043 S cm<sup>-1</sup>). The composite membrane also showed stable proton conductivity after being immersed in water for 2000 h. Therefore, our study demonstrates that preparing water-insoluble nanofillers containing HPW components through sintering is a promising approach.
Authors
- Zhongrui Lu
- Shaojian He (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4358-4662)
- Zhuoran Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6728-6096)
- Xiaoyang Jia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0226-796X)
- Jian Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8812-4398)
- Jun Lin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2465-7125)
- Xiancan Yuan
- Xiong Wang
Institutions
- North China Electric Power University (CN)
- Ministry of Ecology and Environment (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Membranes
- Published
- 2024-09-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/membranes14090195
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Fuel Cells and Related Materials
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.21
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities