Porous Polymeric Membrane for Fuel Cell and Radionuclide Waste Management

Abstract

Membrane technologies have been the key component of research in the last few decades, with the latest improvement in both fabrication and design aspects. Porous / nanochannel polymeric membranes have gained much attention in this perspective for their utilization in a variety of fields such as adhesive, sensor, biotechnology, waste water treatment including separation techniques and ion exchange membranes for polymer electrolytes membrane fuel cell (PEMFCs), because of their excellent thermal, outstanding mechanical properties along with electrical properties when suitably functionalized with some functional group. This thesis mainly focuses the research work being conducted on fabricating porous polymer membranes followed by the functionalization and subsequently their applications in fuel cell technology as electrolytes membrane and Functionalized membrane used for the waste water treatment mainly in the radionuclide tracing. newlineIn this context, swift heavy ions (SHI) bombardment on the polymeric membrane design the porous membranes having controlled channels dimension using ions of different size, nanoparticles and fluence variation. The effect of SHI on the polymeric membrane creates the reactive sites (free radicals), which are utilized to functionalize for relevant applications. However, this thesis aims to discuss the fabrication of latent track/ nanochannels in polymer membrane and subsequent functionalization for energy applications, especially in fuel cell technology. newline newline