Tailoring Membrane Nanostructure and Charge Density for High Electrokinetic Energy Conversion Efficiency

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Sofie Haldrup ; Jacopo Catalano ; Mogens Hinge ; Grethe V. Jensen ; Jan S. Pedersen ; Anders Bentien
• 刊名：ACS Nano
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：February 23, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：10
• 期：2
• 页码：2415-2423
• 全文大小：466K
• ISSN：1936-086X

文摘

The electrokinetic energy conversion (EKEC) of hydraulic work directly into electrical energy has been investigated in charged polymeric membranes with different pore charge densities and characteristic diameters of the nanoporous network. The membranes were synthesized from blends of nitrocellulose and sulfonated polystyrene (SPS) and were comprehensively characterized with respect to structure, composition, and transport properties. It is shown that the SPS can be used as a sacrificial pore generation medium to tune the pore size and membrane porosity, which in turn highly affects the transport properties of the membranes. Furthermore, it is shown that very high EKEC efficiencies (>35%) are encountered in a rather narrow window of the properties of the nanoporous membrane network, that is, with pore diameters of ca. 10 nm and pore charge densities of 4.6 × 10² to 1.5 × 10³ mol SO₃^– m^–3 for dilute solutions (0.03 M LiCl). The high absolute value of the efficiency combined with the determination of the optimal membrane morphology makes membrane-based EKEC devices a step closer to practical applications and high-performance membrane design less empirical.