Design and Development of High-Performance Hybrid Inorganic-Organic Fuel Cell Membranes

摘要

We develop a sol-gel based strategy for the synthesis of hybrid organic-inorganic membranes for PEMFC. This approach consists in growing a functionalized (-SO_3H) mesoporous SiO_2 network in a hydrophobic fluorinated polymer (PVDF-co-HFP). We used different processes to fabricate these membranes including solvent casting and spray-coating. These different methods allow a control of the microstructure of the inorganic network in the polymer at different scales which in turn does influence proton transport throughout the inorganic mesostructured network. The interracial area between the hydrophobic and hydrophilic domains can be tuned and conductivity values comparable to Nafion at 60℃ under 100% humidity were achieved.