Intermediate-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane
fuel cells
(IT-PEMFCs), operating with phosphoric acid (H3PO4) doped polybenzimidazole (PBI), are severely limited by H3PO4 evaporation at high temperatures and poor resiliency
in the presence of water. Polycations (PCs), on the other hand, provide
good acid retention due to strong ion-pair interactions but have low
conductivity due to lower ion-exchange capacity when compared to PBI.
In this work, a class of H3PO4 doped PC–PBI
membrane blends was prepared, and the optimal blend (50:50 ratio)
exhibited remarkably high in-plane proton conductivity, near 0.3 S
cm–1 at 240 °C, while also displaying excellent
thermal stability and resiliency to water vapor. Microwave dielectric
spectroscopy demonstrated that incorporating PBI into the PCs raised
the dielectric constant by 50–70% when compared to the PC by
itself. This observation explains, in part, the high proton conductivity
of the optimal membrane blend. Finally, an all-polymeric membrane
electrode assembly with the new materials gave a competitive IT-PEMFC
performance of 680 mW cm–2 at 220 °C under
dry H2/O2. Importantly, the cell was stable
for up to 30 h at 220 °C and over 84 h at 180 °C. The IT-PEMFC
had reasonable performance (450 mW cm–2) with 25%
carbon monoxide in the hydrogen fuel.
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