muSR of Polyethylene Oxide: A Simple Proton-Conducting Polymer

DOI

Proton-conducting polymer membranes have significant technological applications in hydrogen or methanol fuel cells. muSR can shed light on the mechanisms for proton transport in polymers as Mu+ can be considered a mimic of the proton. We propose to use zero-field-muSR and weak transverse-field-muSR to measure Mu+ hopping rates in dehydrated polyethylene oxide (PEO) both above and below the glass transition temperature (Tg ~215 K). We will determine the Mu+ (and by analogy H+) hopping parameters (activation energies, pre-exponential factors) in PEO from the temperature dependence of the spin relaxation rates. In future work we will investigate how hydration and the addition of strong acids affect the hopping process, which will provide information useful for the optimization of proton-conducting membranes.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.67771953
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/67771953
Provenance
Creator Dr Iain McKenzie; Dr Jamie Peck; Dr Stephen Cottrell
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2018
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Chemistry; Natural Sciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2015-11-30T09:30:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2015-12-03T09:30:00Z