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A Blend Conducting Membranes For Direct Methanol Fuel Cells, Lei Li, Jun Zhang, Hong Wu, Yu-Xin Wang

Journal of Electrochemistry

An attempt was made to modify membranes for direct methanol fuel cells by blending Nafion or polystyrene sulfonic acid (PSSA) with polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) from their solutions. The proton conductivity and methanol barrier property as a function of the membrane compositions are discussed. Compared with the Nafion  117 membrane, the PVDF_Nafion blend membranes with 25 wt% of Nafion showed a decrease in the conductivity by about 2 orders of magnitude, and the methanol barrier properties increased about 3 orders of magnitude. If the ratio (σ/P) is adopted to characterize the performance of the membrane, the PVDF_PSSA and PVDF_Nafiion blend …