“Highly Proton-Conducting Self-Humidifying Microchannels Generated by Copolymer Brushes on a Scaffold”

B. YAMEEN; A. KALTBEITZEL; A. LANGNER; F. MUELLER; U. GOESELE; W. KNOLL; O. AZZARONI

Angewandte Chemie

WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH

Año: 2009 vol. 48 p. 3124 - 3128

1433-7851

<!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:ES; mso-fareast-language:ES;} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -->In this work, we report promising results regarding the facile molecular design of proton conduction displaying high proton conductivity over a wide range of relative humidity conditions.  Our approach is centered on the surface-initiated polymerization of polyelectrolyte brushes using photoelectrochemically etched silicon membranes as scaffolds to build-up structurally and chemically well-defined hydrophilic channels. The experimental results show that the polyelectrolyte brush-based pore-filling approach, using sulfonated monomers as proton carriers and polyethylene glycol-based monomers as humidifying agents, provides a unique and powerful tool to fabricate proton conducting membranes with conductivity values above 10-2 S/cm regardless of the humidification level.