TY  - JOUR
AU  - Zhao, Yue
AU  - Yoshimura, Kimio
AU  - Motegi, Toshinori
AU  - Hiroki, Akihiro
AU  - Radulescu, Aurel
AU  - Maekawa, Yasunari
TI  - Three-Component Domains in the Fully Hydrated Nafion Membrane Characterized by Partial Scattering Function Analysis
JO  - Macromolecules
VL  - 54
IS  - 9
SN  - 1520-5835
CY  - Washington, DC
PB  - Soc.
M1  - FZJ-2021-02216
SP  - 4128 - 4135
PY  - 2021
AB  - A fully hydrated Nafion membrane is generally treated as a three-component system comprising the tetrafluoroethylene-like main chain, the fluorinated side chain ending with a sulfonic acid group, and absorbed water. We applied the contrast variation small-angle neutron scattering technique to decompose scattering intensity profiles to partial scattering functions (PSFs) of each component in Nafion quantitatively. In the large scale (>30 nm), structural heterogeneities were observed in the main- and side-chain domains but not in water domains. In the middle scale (5–30 nm), a bicontinuous-like structure of crystalline and amorphous phases with a mean separation distance of 11 nm was observed, as a result of the main-chain semicrystalline templating effect. In the small scale (<5 nm), another bicontinuous-like structure exists in the amorphous phase with a mean separation distance of about 4 nm, indicating a well-connected water network responsible for the good membrane conductivity. Cross-term analysis of PSFs for two components suggested the location of each component that the main-chain domains tends to phase-separate from either the side-chain or water domains, but the side-chain and water domains are closely attached through sulfonic acid groups.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000651530900019
DO  - DOI:10.1021/acs.macromol.1c00587
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/892627
ER  -