• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.135-142
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• 2009

$^{195}Pt$ NMR measurements were performed to deduce the variation of local density of states at the Fermi energy ($E_F$-LDOS) at the surface of carbonsupported Pt catalysts due to the addition of $Nafion^{(R)}$ ionomer in the metalelectrode-assembly for fuel cells. The results showed that the EF-LDOS at the surface of Pt particles was enhanced by the addition of $Nafion^{(R)}$ ionomers whereas it was uninfluenced in the inner (bulk) part of the Pt particles. This suggests that the effects of ionomers on the electronic states of the Pt particle surface are related to the electrochemical activity of the catalysts.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.540-546
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• 2010

In this manuscript, in order to reduce methanol permeability and, at the same time, to increase proton conductivity THS-PSA containing silica compound, responsible for methanol permeability reduction, and sulfonic acid, responsible for proton conductivity enhancement, was applied onto PVA/PSSA-MA membranes. And in order to improve durability, the resulting membranes, PVA/PSSAMA/THS-PSA, were exposed to 500ppm F2 gas at varying reaction times. The surface-fluorinated membranes were characterized through the measurement of contact angles, thermo-gravimetric analysis, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to observe the physico-chemical changes. For the evaluation of the electro-chemical changes in the resulting membranes, its water contents, ion exchange capacity, proton conductivity, and methanol permeability were measured and then compared with the commercial membrane, Nafion 115. Finally, the membran electrode assembly(MEA) was prepared and the cell voltage against the current density was measured. As fluorination time increased, the contents of F2 increased up to maximum 4.3% and to depth of 50 nm. At 60 min of fluorination, the proton conductivity was 0.036 S/cm, larger than Nafion 115 at 0.024 S/cm, and the methanol permeability was $9.26E-08cm^2/s$, less than Nafion 115 at $1.17E-06cm^2/s$.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.523-538
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• 2009

Recently, there has been a keen demand for real-time automatic monitoring of VOCs not only in Korea but other developed countries. We carried out this study to evaluate and to optimize the performance of a continuous automatic monitoring system for hazardous VOCs (HVOCs) in the ambient atmosphere, using an on-line GC system. The online system normally consisted of a Nafion dryer prior to a cold trap of an automatic thermal desorption apparatus and a GC system equipped with two detectors, i.e. PID and ECD. Preliminary tests conducted to check out any contamination of the system revealed an evidence of significant artifact formation of benzene, and it was found that the Nafion dryer (even brand new one) is the source of the benzene artifact. Thus, all the subsequent experiments in this study was carried out inevitably by removing the Nafion dryer. The on-line GC method was investigated with a variety of QC/QA performance criteria such as repeatability, linearity, lower detection limits, and accuracy. In order to find out the best operating condition for the on-line GC system, three different types (in terms of adsorption strength) of cold trap combinations were tested, i.e. (i) Tenax-TA and Carbopack-B combination (weak and hydrophobic); (ii) Tenax-TA, Carbopack-X and Carboxen-1000 combination (strong and hydrophilic); and (iii) Tenax-TA and Carbopack-X combination (medium and hydrophobic/hydrophilic). The USEPA TO-17 manual method was selected as a reference method to evaluate the performance of the on-line method. A series of experiments revealed that the system performance was superior to others when a cold trap packed with hydrophilic adsorbents (Tenax-TA/Carbopack-X/Carboxen-1000 combination) was used and operated at $25^{\circ}C$. However, the system with a cold trap packed with a combination of Tenax-TA and Carbopack-X is more recommended for field applications since the carboxen-1000 adsorbent is too sensitive to water vapor, and hence the performance of the system might be very unstable to humid samples or during rainy days. Furthermore, the precision and accuracy criteria of the Tenax-TA/ Carbopack-X combination were generally compatible with the triple adsorbents cold trap. The continuous automatic monitoring method is, thus, considered very useful to real-time monitoring to understand the variations of VOCs concentrations in ambient air, as it adopts much simpler procedures in sampling, analysis, and data integration steps than manual monitoring methods. However, it should be noted that there is a high possibility of benzene artifacts formation through the Nafion dryer, which is often installed to remove water vapor in air samples before being adsorbed onto the cold trap. Therefore, if a Nafion dryer is used in any studies of monitoring VOCs, the benzene contamination should be carefully examined before carrying out obtaining the data.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.393-402
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• 1993

Redox flow secondary battery have been studied actively as one of the most promising electrochemical energy storage devices for a wide range of applications, such as electric vehicles, photovoltaic arrays, and excess power generated by electric power plants. In all-vanadium redox flow battery using solution of vanadium-sulfuric acid as a active material, the difficulty in developing an efficient ion selective membrane can still be identified. The asymmetric cation exchange membrane(M-30) as a separator of all-vanadium redox flow battery which were obtained by the reaction of chlorosulfonation for 30 minutes under the irradiation of UV, showed its superiority in the transport number of 0.94 and electrical resistivity of $0.5{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$. The base membrane were prepared by lamination a low density polyethlene film of $10{\mu}m$ thickness on polyolefin membrane(HIPORE 120). The electrical resistivity of M-30 membrane in real solution of vanadium-sulfuric acid was $3.79{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$ and it was similar to that of Nafion 117 membrane. Also the cell resistivity was $6.6{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$and lower than that of Nafion 117. In considertion of electrochemical properties and costs of membranes, M-30 membrane was better than that of Nafion 117 and CMV of Asahi glass Co. as a separator of all-vanadium redox flow battery.

• Journal of Photoscience
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.175-180
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• 2003

Zeolite, Nafion membranes and vesicles were used as microreactors to control the pathway of photosensitized oxidation of alkenes and remarkable selectivity was achieved.

• Proceedings of the Polymer Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.127-128
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• 2006

Nafion/basic polymer composite membranes were prepared to reduce the methanol crossover for the application of direct methanol fuel cell. The thermal and mechanical properties increased with increasing basic polymer contents due to the formation of complex via acid/basic interaction. The water uptake, proton conductivity, methanol permeability decreased with increasing basic polymer concentration by reduction of acidity associated with the formation of acid/base complex. The molecular effect on those properties was not considerable.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.386-392
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• 2014

Two commercial membranes (porous membrane and cation exchange membrane) were evaluated as a separator in the Zn-Br redox-flow battery (ZBRFB). The performance properties of ZBRFB were test in the current density of $20mA/cm^2$. The electromotive forces (OCV at SOC 100%) of ZBRFB using SF-600 (porous membrane) and Nafion 117 (cation exchange membrane) were 1.87 V and 1.93 V, respectively. The cycle performance of ZBRFB using each membrane was evaluated during 7 cycles. The performance of ZBRFB using SF-600 membrane was 89.76%, 83.46% and 74.88% for average current efficiency, average voltage efficiency and average energy efficiency, respectively. The performance of ZBRFB using Nafion117 membrane was 97.7%, 76.33% and 74.56% for average current efficiency, average voltage efficiency and average energy efficiency, respectively.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.667-671
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• 2015

Enzyme fuel cells were operated with cells composed of enzyme anode and PEMFC cathode. Enzyme anodes was fabricated by compression of a mixture of graphite particle, glucose oxidase(Gox) as a enzyme and ferrocene as a redox mediator, and then coated with Nafion ionomer solution. Performances of enzyme unit cell were measured with variation of anode manufacture factors, to find optimum condition of enzyme anode. Optimum pressure was 8.89MPa for enzyme anode pressing process. Highest power density was obtained at 60% graphite composition in enzyme anode. Optimum glucose concentration was 1.7 mol/l in anode substrate solution. The enzyme anode was stabilized by two times of deeping in Nafion solution for 1 sec.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.28 no.12
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• pp.2266-2270
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• 2007

Electron transfer of a redox protein at a bare gold electrode is too slow to observe the redox peaks. A novel Nafion-riboflavin functional membrane was constructed during this study and electron transfer of cytochrome c, superoxide dismutase, and hemoglobin were carried out on the functional membrane-modified gold electrode with good stability and repeatability. The immobilized protein-modified electrodes showed quasireversible electrochemical redox behaviors with formal potentials of 0.150, 0.175, and 0.202 V versus Ag/AgCl for the cytochrome c, superoxide dismutase and hemoglobin, respectively. Whole experiment was carried out in the 50 mM MOPS buffer solution with pH 6.0 at 25 oC. For the immobilized protein, the cathodic transfer coefficients were 0.67, 0.68 and 0.67 and electron transfer-rate constants were evaluated to be 2.25, 2.23 and 2.5 s?1, respectively. Hydrogen peroxide concentration was measured by the peroxidase activity of hemoglobin and our experiment revealed that the enzyme was fully functional while immobilized on the Nafion-riboflavin membrane.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.59 no.5
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• pp.413-422
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• 2015

Proton exchange membrane (PEM), which transfers proton from the anode to the cathode, is the key component of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Nafion is widely used as PEM due to its high proton conductivity as well as excellent chemical and physical stabilities. However, its high cost and the environmental hazards limit the commercial application in PEMFCs. To overcome these disadvantages, various alternative polymer electrolytes have been investigated for fuel cell applications. We used densely sulfonated polymers to maximize the ion conductivity of the corresponding membrane. To overcome high swelling, dipole-dipole interaction was used by introducing nitrile groups into the polymer backbone. As a result, physically-crosslinked membranes showed improved swelling ratio despite of high water uptake. All the membranes with different hydrophilic-hydrophobic compositions showed higher conductivity, despite their lower IEC, than that of Nafion-117.