Partial fluorinated silica incorporated with tuneable alkyl cross-linker based multi-cationic alkaline membrane for vanadium redox flow battery

Herein, we report partial fluorinated polymer (poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene); PVDF-co-HFP)-based multi-cationic (quaternary ammonium, and imidazolium groups) cross-linked (tuneable carbon chain cross-linker) anion exchange membrane (AEM) incorporated with functionalized silica to avoid any structural deformations under harassed environment. Prepared membranes are cross-linked using different cross-linking agents, to study the effect of cross-linker chain length on the membrane performance. Incorporation of functionalized silica by acid-catalyzed sol-gel process improves membrane properties and stabilities. Reported PVIm-C10-APS AEM shows high conductivity (7.20 × 10−2 S/cm), and ion exchange capacity (1.48 meq/g). Well optimized positively charged PVIm-C10-APS AEM exhibits extremely low permeability of vanadium cations because of "Donnan exclusion" (9.80 × 10−7 cm2/s). During VRFB operation, PVIm-C10-APS AEM exhibits 98.10% coulombic efficiency (CE) and 77.60% voltage efficiency at 100 mA/cm2 without any significant deterioration up to 300 charge-discharge cycles. Further, PVIm-C10-APS membrane also shows >1.50 V OCV and 345 mW/cm2 peak power density at 400 mA/cm2. Reported AEM has been bench-marked with other membranes reported in the literature, and assessed as a promising material for VRFB or membrane separator for energy devices.