Facile synthesis and properties of poly(ether ketone cardo)s bearing heterocycle groups for high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

Novel high temperature polymer electrolyte membranes (HT-PEMs) are fabricated from commercial and low-cost poly (ether ketone cardo) (PEK-Cardo). Rather than normal chloromethylation quaternization procedure to introduce basic groups into (arylene ether)s, three different long side-chain grafted PEK-Cardo through a facile one-step lactamization between the cardo phenolphthalein type moiety in amino compounds (i.e. 1-(3-aminopropyl) imidazole (APIm), pyrrolidin-2-one (APy) 3-(dimethylamino)-1-propylamine). The obtained lactamized exhibit excellent phosphoric acid doping capability physicochemical properties optimized by adjusting chemical structure grafting degree of groups. Fuel cell results demonstrate big potential for HT-PEM fuel applications. Thus, this proposal provides new, straightforward method prepare high-performance HT-PEMs.