Titanium oxide/graphitic carbon nitride nanocomposites as fillers for enhancing the performance of SPAES membranes for fuel cells

Abstract Our work deals with the fabrication of nanocomposite membranes by reinforcing sulfonated poly(aryl ether sulfone)s (SPAES) properties through incorporating various titanium oxide/graphitic carbon nitride (TiO2/g-C3N4) nanocomposite contents. They reveal promising results for applications in proton exchange membrane fuel cells. The nanocomposites introduction provides the membranes with noticeable proton conductivity, mechanical and dimensional stability improvements in comparison with the control SPAES membrane. The SPAES-TiO2/g-C3N4-1.0 nanocomposite membrane demonstrates the prominent proton conductivity of 325.3 mS cm-1 at 80 °C and 258.4 mS cm-1 at 94.1% RH, as well as outstanding oxidative stability of only weight loss of 4.6% after the Fenton’s accelerating aging at 80 °C for 1 h. For the single fuel cell performance, it reaches the highest power density of 525.6 mW cm-2 at 1150.8 mA cm-2. These results suggest the good prospect of the dual compositing strategy for membrane modification in the fuel cell applications.