Paper: Polymer Electrolyte Membrane with Nanomatrix Channel Prepared By Sulfonation of Natural Rubber Grafted with Polystyrene (Spring 185th Technical Meeting)

Polymer Electrolyte Membrane with Nanomatrix Channel Prepared By Sulfonation of Natural Rubber Grafted with Polystyrene

Wednesday, March 26, 2014: 8:15 AM

Yoshimasa Yamamoto¹, Noriyuki Kado², Mitsuaki Tokuda², Patjaree Suksawad² and Seiichi Kawahara², (1)Department of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tokyo National College of Technology, Hachioji, Japan, (2)Nagaoka University of Technology, Nagaoka, Japan

Nanomatrix channel to prepare high-proton-conductive polymer electrolyte was formed by graft copolymerization of styrene onto deproteinized natural rubber (DPNR) followed by sulfonation with chlorosulfuric acid. The resulting sulfonated DPNR-graft-PS (SDPNR-graft-PS) was characterized by solid state ¹³C CP/MAS NMR spectroscopy, elemental analysis, and transmission electron microscopy. High proton conductivity of about 0.1 S/cm was accomplished with continuous nanomatrix channel of sulfonated polystyrene. Arrhenius plot for proton conductivity of SDPNR-graft-PS makes possible to consider that the proton-transport in SDPNR-graft-PS with nanomatrix channel, nafion 117 and sulfonated polystyrene occurs in a manner of Grotthus mechanism, in which the proton jump from one sulfonic acid to the other takes place.