Special Issue
  • Structural and Thermal Analysis and Membrane Characteristics of Phosphoric Acid-doped Polybenzimidazole/Strontium Titanate Composite Membranes for HT-PEMFC Applications

  • Kanakaraj Selvakumar*, **, Ae Rhan Kim*, ***† , Manimuthu Ramesh Prabhu**† , Dong Jin Yoo*, ***†

  • * Department of Life Science, Jeounbuk National University, Jeonju 54896, Korea
    ** Department of Physics, Alagappa University, Karaikudi 630004, India
    *** Department of Energy Storage/ Conversion Engineering (BK21 FOUR) of Graduate School, Jeounbuk National University, Jeonju 54896, Korea

  • This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A series of novel PBI/SrTiO3 nanocomposite membranes composed of polybenzimidazole (PBI) and strontium titanate (SrTiO3) with a perovskite structure were fabricated with various concentrations of SrTiO3 through a solution casting method. Various characterization techniques such as proton nuclear magnetic resonance, thermogravimetric analysis, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and AC impedance spectroscopy were used to investigate the chemical structure, thermal, phosphate absorption and morphological properties, and proton conductivity of the fabricated nanocomposite membranes. The optimized PBI/SrTiO3-8 polymer nanocomposite membrane containing 8wt% of SrTiO3 showed a higher proton conductivity of 7.95 × 10-2 S/cm at 160oC compared to other nanocomposite membranes. The PBI/SrTiO3-8 composite membrane also showed higher thermal stability compared to pristine PBI. In addition, the roughness change of the polymer composite membrane was also investigated by AFM. Based on these results, nanocomposite membranes based on perovskite structures are expected to be considered as potential candidates for high-temperature PEM fuel cell applications.


Keywords: Polybenzimidazole, Perovskite structure, Nanocomposite membrane, Thermal stability

This Article

Correspondence to

  • Ae Rhan Kim*, *** , Manimuthu Ramesh Prabhu** , Dong Jin Yoo*, ***

  • * Department of Life Science, Jeounbuk National University, Jeonju 54896, Korea
    ** Department of Physics, Alagappa University, Karaikudi 630004, India
    *** Department of Energy Storage/ Conversion Engineering (BK21 FOUR) of Graduate School, Jeounbuk National University, Jeonju 54896, Korea

  • E-mail: kimaerhan@jbnu.ac.kr, mkram83@gmail.com, djyoo@jbn