Nanocomposites and nanomaterials

Organic-inorganic proton conductive nanocomposites
Zhyhailo M.M.1, Rymsha Kh.V.1, Demchyna O.I.1, Yevchuk I.Yu.1,       Rachiy B.I.2
1 Department of Physico-Chemistry of Fossil Fuels, L.M. Lytvynenko Institute of Physico-organic Chemistry and Coal Chemistry, NAS of Ukraine, Naukova Str., 3a, Lviv-79060, Ukraine 
E-mail: zhyhailo.mariia@gmail.com
2 Physico-technical Department, Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, Shevchenko Str., 57, Ivano-Frankivsk 76018, Ukraine 
E-mail: bogdan_rachiy@ukr.net

The growing interest in fuel cells is determined by their environmental safety and the possibility of using renewable fuels. The key element of fuel cell is proton conductive membrane. The state-of-the-art proton conductive membrane is Nafion (Du Pont). Organic-inorganic nanocomposites seem to be promising alternative materials for proton conductive membranes production.
We synthesized some types of organic-inorganic membranes from acrylic monomers (acrylic acid AA, acrylonitrile AN, sulphopropylacrylate potassium salt SPAK, acrylamide AAm, ethylene glycol methacrylate EGMA as crosslinker) and sol-gel systems based on TEOS and MAPTMS. The proton conductivity of the synthesized membranes at different temperatures was measured by means of impedance spectroscopy using Autolab PGSTAT100 measuring complex (Eco Chemie) equipped with FRA-2 program (Table 1).
Table 1
Proton conductivity (Sm/cm) of organic-inorganic membranes 
Sample, wt. %	20oC	40oC	60oC	
15AA : 25SPAK : 35AN : 25EGMA	3,6·10-3	5,7·10-3	8,3·10-3	
66AAm : 25SPAK : 8AN : 1MBA : 20SG	1,6·10-2	-	‒	
20AA : 40AN : 15EGMA : 5MPTMS	6,3·10-3	9,8·10-3	‒	
20AA : 40AN : 15EGMA : 10MPTMS	3,8·10-3	5,2·10-3	9,4·10-3	

	       As one can see synthesized membranes have sufficiently high proton conductivity, which increases with increasing temperature. Membrane 2 has proton conductivity comparable to that of membrane Nafion.