High temperature proton conducting hybrid polymer electrolyte membranes

Hybrid materials with nano-size interfaces between organic and inorganic offer exceptional opportunities to create entirely unique properties. Bridged polyethers are a family of hybrid organic/inorganic materials prepared by sol-gel processing of monomers that contain a variable polyether bridging group and functional silyl groups. The materials possess thermal as well as chemical tolerance at high temperatures due to the inorganic interfaces in the macromolecules. In the present paper, organic/ inorganic nanohybrid membrane has been prepared for proton conducting polymer electrolyte by incorporating heteropolyacids such as 12-phosphotungstic acid (PWA) clusters at the interfaces and high temperature conductivity has been examined. While the intermediate temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) can be a candidate for overcoming major problems in the current PEMFC such as CO poisoning on the Pt electrodes surfaces and heat managements, new proton conducting polymer electrolytes with more temperature tolerance has been investigated on functional hybrids. The unique hybrid macromolecules with fast ionic conduction at higher temperature have been synthesized in the present work. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.