The Charge Transport Mechanism in Brønsted-Acidic Protic Ionic Liquid/Water Systems – An NMR and QENS Study

In this study, a protic ionic liquid (PIL), 2-Sulfoethylmethylammonium triflate [2-Sema][TfO] is considered as a potential new proton conducting electrolyte for future polymer membrane fuel cells capable of ambient air operation above 100 °C. The proton dynamics of the PIL with residual water are examined as a function of the hydration level on different time scales using pulsed field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance (PFG-NMR) and quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS). The separation of the different contributing relaxation processes enables a quantification of the proton fractions for the underlying hopping or vehicular motions. The hopping motion of the water in the time scale of picosecond and the vehicular motion in the time scale of nanosecond are detected by means of QENS. Such dynamic processes can be well described by the Chudley-Elliot jump model. This emphasised the presence of fixed jump lenghts. In the timescale of millisecond, the cooperative transport of the active protons of the acidic SO3H group and of the H2O molecules, as well as the vehicular transport of the PIL cations are detected by NMR. The different diffusion coefficients obtained by the NMR and QENS techniques are discussed in detail