Impact of cross-linking of polymers on transport of salt and water in polyelectrolyte membranes: A mesoscopic simulation study
Type
ArticleAuthors
Aryal, DipakGanesan, Venkat

KAUST Grant Number
OSR-2016-CRG5-2993-1Date
2018-12-14Embargo End Date
2019-12-14Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/668690
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Our recent atomistic simulation studies demonstrated that the transport properties of salt ions and water in non-crosslinked polymer electrolyte membrane exhibit an intriguing dependence on salt concentration that is opposite to that seen in electrolyte solutions. Here, we extend our study to probe the influence of the degree of cross-linking of the polymer on the transport properties of salt and water in polymer electrolyte membranes. Towards this objective, we use a coarse-grained model embedded within dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) mesoscale simulations, which allows us to access time scales necessary for studying crosslinked polymer systems. Our DPD simulations on non-crosslinked membranes reproduce results that are in qualitative agreement with our atomistic simulations. For the case of crosslinked membranes, our results demonstrate that the diffusion of salt ions and water is reduced significantly relative to crosslinked systems. However, the trends exhibited by the salt concentration dependence of diffusivities and the coordination of the cations with anions and with the polymer backbone remain qualitatively similar to those observed in non-crosslinked membranes.Citation
Aryal, D., & Ganesan, V. (2018). Impact of cross-linking of polymers on transport of salt and water in polyelectrolyte membranes: A mesoscopic simulation study. The Journal of Chemical Physics, 149(22), 224902. doi:10.1063/1.5057708Sponsors
We thank Professor Benny Freeman and Dr. Jovan Kamcev for many useful discussions. We acknowledge funding in part by grants from the Robert A. Welch Foundation (Grant No. F1599) and the National Science Foundation (Grant No. DMR-1721512), and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Grant No. OSR-2016-CRG5-2993-1) which helped support the development of atomistic simulations and the results arising from such a framework.Publisher
AIP PublishingJournal
The Journal of Chemical PhysicsAdditional Links
http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5057708ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1063/1.5057708