Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Polymer And Small Molecule Designs For Anion Conducting Membranes: Connected Ion-Channel Morphologies And Highly Alkaline Stable Ammonium Cations, Sedef P. Ertem

Doctoral Dissertations

Fuel cells are one of the oldest sustainable energy generation devices, converting chemical energy into electrical energy via reverse-electrolysis reactions. With the rapid development of polymer science, solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) membranes replaced the conventional liquid ion transport media, rendering low-temperature fuel cells more accessible for applications in portable electronics and transportation. However, SPE fuel cells are still far from commercialization due to high operation cost, and insufficient lifetime and performance limitations. Anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFCs) are inexpensive alternatives to current proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) technology, which relies on utilizing expensive noble-metal catalysts and perfluorinated SPE …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Polymeric Anion Exchange Membranes, Wenxu Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

As alkaline anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AAEMFC) are regarded as promising and important energy devices, the development of high performance anion exchange membranes are in urgent need, as well as fundamental investigation on the structure-property relationship, which are the motivation of this dissertation. Three different polymer systems are presented and focused on polymer synthesis, material morphology, and ion transport phenomena. Crosslinked membranes are promising as practical materials, however, the understanding and further improvement of its performance is hindered by the lack of an ordered morphology or well-defined chemical structure. In Chapter 2, a series of crosslinked membranes were design …

Cobaltocenium Containing Polymers: Complexation With Organic Anion And Initial Assesment For Anion Exchange Membranes, Mohammad Pabel Kabir

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, cobaltocenium containing monomers and polymers are investigated for guest anion loading and alkaline anion exchange membrane for fuel cells. The properties of these polymers are characterized and discussed.

Chapter 1 describes overall background and potential applications of metallocene and metallocenium containing polymers. The research objectives of metallocenium containing polymers are discussed.

Cobaltocenium containing polymers have potential applications in biomedical science. Therefore, the effect of different parameters such as electrostatic charge, size, conformation, π-electron system and hydrogen bonding on the interactions between these polymers and small anionic probes has been studied qualitatively, as described in Chapter 2. A …