Crosslinked Polynorbornene-Based Anion Exchange Membranes with Perfluorinated Branch Chains

Abstract

To investigate the effect of perfluorinated substituent on the properties of anion exchange membranes (AEMs), cross-linked polynorbornene-based AEMs with perfluorinated branch chains were prepared via ring opening metathesis polymerization, subsequent crosslinking reaction, and quaternization. The crosslinking structure enables the resultant AEMs (CFnB) to exhibit a low swelling ratio, high toughness, and high water uptake, simultaneously. In addition, benefiting from the ion gathering and side chain microphase separation caused by their flexible backbone and perfluorinated branch chain, these AEMs had high hydroxide conductivity up to 106.9 mS cm−1 at 80 °C even at low ion content (IEC < 1.6 meq g−1). This work provides a new approach to achieve improved ion conductivity at low ion content by introducing the perfluorinated branch chains and puts forward a referable way to prepare AEMs with high performance.