Anhydrous proton conductivity of acid doped vinyltriazole-based polymers

Poly(1,2,4-vinyltriazole) (PVTr) and poly(1,2,4-vinyltriazole-co-5-vinyltetrazole-co-acrylonitrile) (P(VTr-VT-AN)) were prepared by normal free radical polymerization and click chemistry, respectively. The structure of the polymers was characterized by FTIR spectra, H NMR spectrum and elemental analysis. Compared with polybenzimidazole (PBI) which is one of the most widely studied anhydrous proton conducting polymers, the solubility of vinyltriazole-based polymers is improved significantly. They are soluble in a lot of polar solvents. The glass-transition temperatures of such kind of polymers are between 70 and 85 °C, thus indirectly indicating the improvement of fabricating properties. In phosphoric acid doped membranes, the higher the basicity of the vinyltriazole-based polymers is, the higher the proton conductivity is. The temperature dependence of the proton conductivity of the acid doped membranes can always be fitted by a simple Arrhenius equation. Transmittance of phosphoric acid doped vinyltriazole-based polymers is above 80% in the range of visual spectra and changes a little with the different structure and basicity of the copolymers.