Study of nitrile-containing proton exchange membranes prepared by radiation grafting: Performance and degradation in the polymer electrolyte fuel cell

The fuel cell performance and durability of three kinds of styrene based radiation grafted membranes are investigated and compared in the single cell. The styrene/methacrylonitrile (MAN) co-grafted membrane exhibits the best performance among the tested radiation grafted membranes. The accelerated tests under open circuit voltage (OCV) conditions and post-mortem analysis demonstrate that the nitrile-containing membranes exhibit significantly enhanced durability compared to the pure styrene grafted membrane, which is associated with the reduced gas crossover rates and attributed to the improved gases barrier properties due to the polarity of the nitrile group. To understand the influence of each functional group in the co-monomer units, both styrene/MAN and styrene/acrylonitrile (AN) co-grafted membranes are evaluated in a set of tests at OCV. The degrees of loss of the graft components are subsequently quantitatively analyzed based on FTIR spectra, showing a comparable decomposition rate of grafted styrene units, but more loss of nitrile in case of the styrene/AN co-grafted membrane. The styrene/AN co-grafted membrane, with AN lacking protection at the alpha-position in contrast to MAN, is found to be susceptible to significant hydrolysis, directly leading to an accelerated degradation in the late stages of the 130 h OCV test and inhomogeneous in-plane degradation. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.