Facile Preparation of Anion-Exchange Membrane Based on Polystyrene-b-polybutadiene-b-polystyrene for the Application of Alkaline Fuel Cells

In the present work, a novel series of quaternized polystyrene-b-polybutadiene-b-polystyrene (SBS-QA) is designed and prepared successfully via feasible and inexpensive synthetic procedure. The SBS-QA-based anion-exchange membranes (AEMs) with various ion-exchange capacities (IECs) are prepared and characterized, and the membranes exhibit good thermal stability and mechanical properties due to the elastomer-like nature of SBS. These AEMs show a very slow swell ratio with normal water uptake and IEC, and the SBS-QA25 membrane shows the conductivity of 17.97 and 30.87 mS cm–1 at 20 and 80 °C, respectively. The AEMs exhibit a robust alkaline stability due to its unique structure of ether-free backbone with side-chain cation groups. The high conductivity, enhanced alkaline stability, improved swelling resistance, and excellent mechanical properties of the SBS-QA-based AEMs indicate that they are promising materials for fuel cell applications.