Jun 20, 2011 07:54 GMT  ·  By
Polymers derived from Nafion could allow for the creation of more advanced batteries in the near future
   Polymers derived from Nafion could allow for the creation of more advanced batteries in the near future

A group of physicists in the United States announces the development of a new method for imaging the internal structure of a material called Nafion. The advanced polymer is tremendously useful for constructing batteries, and the innovation could make it even more so.

Now that the material's inner structure can be imaged in detail, experts can set up processes that would modify this structure, therefore boosting the already-wide range of applications the polymer is good for.

The new approach was developed by a number of research groups at the Virginia Institute of Technology (Virginia Tech). Experts with these teams decided to combine their efforts, in order to produce the most relevant result possible,

Nafion is a polymer electrolyte, a material that is capable of conducting ions (electrically-charged atoms) very efficiently. This specific polymer can also transport water through its complex structure, which feature nanoscale channels.

Some of the most often touted applications for this material include being used as a component in new fuel cells, organic batteries, as well as in reverse-osmosis water purification processes. The polymer was first produced some 50 years ago.

Since then, scientists have been working on making other materials based on it, but these efforts have been hampered by the fact that they have been unable to figure out how molecules come together in Nafion, AlphaGalileo reports.

Without this knowledge, it's impossible to determine where to intervene in order to make the material more efficient and suited for a specific task. What the Virginia Tech groups did was figure out a way of doing just that.

Details of the work appear in a study entitled “Linear coupling of alignment with transport in a polymer electrolyte membrane,” which is published in the June 19 issue of the top journal Nature Materials.

“We were looking at water molecules inside Nafion as internal reporters of structure and efficiency of conduction. The new feature we discovered is the locally aligned aggregates of polymer molecules in the material,” says expert Louis A. Madsen.

“The molecules align like strands of dry spaghetti lined up in a box. We can measure the speed (diffusion) of the water molecules and the direction they travel within those structures, which relates strongly to the alignment of the polymer molecule strands,” he adds.

Madsen holds an appointment as a researcher at the Virginia Tech College of Science and the Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute Chemistry Department.