Effect of solvent-free membranes-forming processes on HT-PEM properties of highly soluble polybenzimidazole

The cost-effective sol-gel process for the preparation of phosphoric acid (PA) doped P-PBI membranes using PPA as both condensation reagent and solvent could avoid the use of hazardous organic solvents. However, optimizing the trade-off effect between mechanical properties and proton conductivity of sol-gel membranes by increasing polymer content is ineffective due to the limited solubility of P-PBI in PPA. Herein, we successfully fabricated a series of sol-gel membranes with tunable properties using a highly soluble polybenzimidazole (NPBI). In addition, the sol-gel (5 wt%) N-PBI membrane was further specially dried and post-doped with PA to obtain a re-doped sol-gel N-PBI membrane. Therefore, the properties of PA-doped N-PBI membranes fabricated using three different processes-conv, sol-gel, and re-doped sol-gel-were thoroughly characterized. The sol-gel N-PBI membranes demonstrated a dependence of mechanical properties and proton conductivity on polymer content, with a maximum tensile strength of 7.0 MPa at 7 wt% polymer content and a maximum proton conductivity of 205 mS/cm (200 degrees C) at 2 wt% polymer content. The ADL-controlled re-doped sol-gel N-PBI membrane achieved higher saturated ADL than the sol-gel N-PBI membrane, resulting in higher proton conductivity and fuel cell performance. The sol-gel (2 wt%) N-PBI membrane exhibited an ultra-high H2/O2 peak power density of 1058 mW/cm2 under an optimized operating condition, and the sol-gel (7 wt%) N-PBI membrane achieved stable operation without apparent degradation for over 2000 h at 160 degrees C with 0.3 A/cm2 current density.