writer：Guangwei He, Zongyu Li, Mingzhao Xu, Shaofei Wang, Jing Zhao, Zhen Li, Xinlin Yang, Zhongyi Jiang*
keywords：solid electrolytes, alkaline fuel cells, ionic nanoaggregates, hydroxide conductivity, membrane
source：期刊
specific source：ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 9 (34), 28346-28354 (2017). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b05400
Issue time：2017年

The creation of interconnected ionic nanoaggregates within solid

electrolytes is a crucial yet challenging task for fabricating high-performance alkaline

fuel cells. Herein, we present a facile and generic approach to embedding ionic

nanoaggregates via pre-designed hybrid core-shell nanoarchitecture within nonionic

polymer membranes: i) synthesizing core-shell nanoparticles composed of

SiO2/densely quaternary ammonium functionalized polystyrene. Due to the spatial

confinement effect of the SiO2 “core”, the abundant hydroxide-conducting groups are

locally aggregated in the functionalized polystyrene “shell”, forming ionic

nanoaggregates bearing intrinsic continuous ion channels; ii) Embedding these ionic

nanoaggregates (20-70 wt%) into polysulfone matrix to construct interconnected

hydroxide-conducting channels. The chemical composition, physical morphology,

amount and distribution of the ionic nanoaggregates are facilely regulated, leading to

highly connected ion channels with high effective ion mobility comparable to that of

the state-of-the-art Nafion. The resulting membranes display strikingly high

hydroxide conductivity (188.1 mS cm-1 at 80 oC), which is one of the highest results

to date. The membranes are also imparted high mechanical properties. The

independent manipulation of the conduction function and the non-conduction function

by the ionic nanoaggregates and the nonionic polymer matrix, opens a new avenue

free of microphase separation to designing high-performance solid electrolytes for

diverse application realms.