An Effective Approach for Alleviating Cation-Induced Backbone Degradation in Aromatic Ether-Based Alkaline Polymer Electrolytes

Aromatic ether-based alkaline polymer electrolytes (APEs) are one of the most popular types of APEs being used in fuel cells. However, recent studies have demonstrated that upon being grafted by proximal cations some polar groups in the backbone of such APEs can be attacked by OH(-), leading to backbone degradation in an alkaline environment. To resolve this issue, we performed a systematic study on six APEs. We first replaced the polysulfone (PS) backbone with polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) and polyphenylether (PPO), whose molecular structures contain fewer polar groups. Although improved stability was seen after this change, cation-induced degradation was still obvious. Thus, our second move was to replace the ordinary quaternary ammonia (QA) cation, which had been closely attached to the polymer backbone, with a pendant-type QA (pQA), which was linked to the backbone through a long side chain. After a stability test in a 1 mol/L KOH solution at 80 °C for 30 days, all pQA-type APEs (pQAPS, pQAPPSU, and pQAPPO) exhibited as low as 8 wt % weight loss, which is close to the level of the bare backbone (5 wt %) and remarkably lower than those of the QA-type APEs (QAPS, QAPPSU, and QAPPO), whose weight losses under the same conditions were >30%. The pQA-type APEs also possessed clear microphase segregation morphology, which led to ionic conductivities that were higher, and water uptakes and degrees of membrane swelling that were lower, than those of the QA-type APEs. These observations unambiguously indicate that designing pendant-type cations is an effective approach to increasing the chemical stability of aromatic ether-based APEs.