Inorganic-organic Hybrid Proton Conductive Membranes Doped with Phosphoric Acid

A new proton conductive inorganic-organic hybrid membrane doped with $H_3PO_4$ was fabricated via sol-gel process wit 3- glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane(GPTMS), 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane(APTES) and tetraethoxysilane(TEOS) asprecursors. Theproto conductivity of about 3.0$\times10^{-3}S/cm$ was obtained at $120^{\circ}C$ under $50\%$ relative humidity (R.H). DTA curves showed that the thermal stability of the membrane is significantly enhanced by the presence of $SiO_2$ framework up to $250^{\circ}C$. SEM and XRD revealed that the gel is microporou and amorphous. The addition of APTES improved the conductivity of the membranes and the effect of the APTES on the conductivity was also discussed in this paper.