Abstract
Finely controlled swelling is reported as a universal and facile method to construct abundant ion-selective channels in polymer membranes. In this work, excellent ion-selectivity of H+/Vn+ is achieved by using a swelling-solidification method based on sulfonated poly(ether sulfone) (SPES) with only 20% sulfonation degree. The swelling degree of the membranes is well controlled by adjusting the solvent ratio of the swelling agent and the swelling time to achieve desired proton conductivity and Vn+ permeability. The as-prepared membrane is successfully applied as highly selective separator for vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs). Key properties such as morphology, proton conductivity, vanadium permeability, ion selectivity, tensile strength and durability are comprehensively characterized and studied. Besides, the performance of the single cells assembled with the swollen SPES membranes are tested and compared with the commercial Nafion®212 membrane. The results indicate that, the VRFB single cell with the swollen SPES membrane shows high energy efficiency exceeding 83% at 100 mA cm−2 and excellent cycling stability over 290 charge-discharge cycles. The capacity retention of the cell with the SPES membrane even reaches 98.21% after 100 cycles at 100 mA cm−2, 24.06% higher than that of Nafion®212 membrane.
Published Version
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