CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, 96 Jinzhai Road, 230026, Hefei, Anhui, China.
Nat Commun. 2018 Jun 12;9(1):2297. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-04733-4.
Synthetic polyelectrolytes, capable of fast transporting protons, represent a challenging target for membrane engineering in so many fields, for example, fuel cells, redox flow batteries, etc. Inspired by the fast advance in molecular machines, here we report a rotaxane based polymer entity assembled via host-guest interaction and prove that by exploiting the thermally triggered translational motion (although not in a controlled manner) of mechanically bonded rotaxane, exceptionally fast proton transfer can be fulfilled at an external thermal input. The relative motion of the sulfonated axle to the ring in rotaxane happens at ~60 °C in our cases and because of that a proton conductivity (indicating proton transfer rate) of 260.2 mS cm, which is much higher than that in the state-of-the-art Nafion, is obtained at a relatively low ion-exchange capacity (representing the amount of proton transfer groups) of 0.73 mmol g.
合成聚电解质能够快速传输质子，这是膜工程领域的一个极具挑战性的目标，例如在燃料电池、氧化还原液流电池等领域。受分子机器快速发展的启发，我们在此报告了一种基于轮烷的聚合物实体，它是通过主客体相互作用组装而成，并证明通过利用机械键合轮烷的热触发平移运动（尽管不是以受控的方式），可以在外热输入下实现异常快速的质子传递。在我们的情况下，轮烷中环对磺化轴的相对运动发生在~60°C，因此在相对较低的离子交换容量（代表质子转移基团的数量）为 0.73mmol/g 时，获得了 260.2mS/cm 的质子电导率（表明质子传递速率），远高于最先进的 Nafion 的电导率。
