Lee Ming-Tsung
Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei 10608, Taiwan.
Polymers (Basel). 2024 Aug 22;16(16):2382. doi: 10.3390/polym16162382.
Triblock copolymers such as styrene-b-(ethylene-co-butylene)-b-styrene (SEBS) have been widely used as an anion exchange membrane for fuel cells due to their phase separation properties. However, modifying the polymer architecture for optimized membrane properties is still challenging. This research develops a strategy to control the membrane morphology based on quaternized SEBS (SEBS-Q) by dual-tapering the interfacial block sequences. The structural and transport properties of SEBS-Q with various tapering styles at different hydration levels are systematically investigated by coarse-grained molecular simulations. The results show that the introduction of the tapered regions induces the formation of a bicontinuous water domain and promotes the diffusivity of the mobile components. The interplay between the solvation of the quaternary groups and the tapered fraction determines the conformation of polymer chains among the hydrophobic-hydrophilic subdomains. The strategy presented here provides a new path to fabricating fuel cell membranes with controlled microstructures.
三嵌段共聚物，如苯乙烯 - b -（乙烯 - 共 - 丁烯） - b - 苯乙烯（SEBS），由于其相分离特性，已被广泛用作燃料电池的阴离子交换膜。然而，为优化膜性能而对聚合物结构进行改性仍然具有挑战性。本研究基于季铵化SEBS（SEBS - Q），通过双锥形化界面嵌段序列，开发了一种控制膜形态的策略。通过粗粒度分子模拟系统地研究了不同水合水平下具有各种锥形化样式的SEBS - Q的结构和传输性能。结果表明，引入锥形区域会诱导形成双连续水区域，并促进可移动组分的扩散。季铵基团的溶剂化与锥形分数之间的相互作用决定了聚合物链在疏水 - 亲水子域之间的构象。本文提出的策略为制备具有可控微观结构的燃料电池膜提供了一条新途径。
