Improved chemical stability and proton selectivity of semi-interpenetrating polymer network amphoteric membrane for vanadium redox flow battery application

In this work, semiinterpenetrating polymer network (semi-IPN), consisting of sulfonated poly (arylene ether sulfone) (SPAES) and crosslinked vinyl imidazole grafted polysulfone (VMPSU), is prepared and characterized. FTIR, EDS, and solubility test indicate the successful preparation of amphoteric membranes. The semi-IPN amphoteric membranes exhibit better stability than pure SPAES membrane, as demonstrated by thermogravimetric analysis and ex situ immersion testing results. More importantly, it is shown that the amphoteric membrane can effectively hinder vanadium ion crossover through the membrane, which is attributed to the semi-IPN structure and Donnan exclusion. As expected, the amphoteric membrane containing 20% VMPSU exhibits the highest proton selectivity (6.86 × 10⁴ S min cm⁻³), comparing to pristine SPAES (1.90 × 10⁴ S min cm⁻³) as well as Nafion117 (1.31 × 10⁴ S min cm⁻³).