大象传媒

Synopsis

The development of solid polymer electrolytes is essential for applications in technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells and electrolyzers. Hydrogen fuel cell technologies are a promising option to replace the internal combustion engine due to their high efficiencies and energy densities. However, the traditional implementations of fuel cells have been plagued by scalability issues due to reliance on fluorine-based materials and to high costs of noble metals such as platinum. Hydrocarbon-based anion-exchange membranes (AEMs) are being developed to address these issues. Several AEM candidates have been studied using both computational and experimental techniques, with a focus on ionomers, where the charge is located along the polymer backbone. In this thesis, the structure and ion dynamics in membranes based on a series of benzimidazolium and imidazolium backbones are compared using computational techniques such as molecular dynamics simulations and clustering analyses in order to improve our understanding of the differences between candidate membranes. All candidate membranes percolated at low degrees of hydration and did not exhibit long-range phase separation.