Characterization on the potential of carboxy methylcellulose for application as proton conducting biopolymer electrolytes

The development of new biopolymer electrolytes (BEs) based on carboxy methylcellulose (CMC) has been accomplished by incorporating dodecyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (DTAB) to the polymer–salt system via solution-cast technique. The polymer–salt complex formation and the polymer–proton interactions have been analyzed through Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement, impedance measurement and Transference number measurement (TNM). The highest conductivity at room temperature is 7.72 × 10− 4 Scm− 1 for sample containing 35 wt. % DTAB. The temperature dependence of the BEs system exhibits Arrhenius behavior. The conductivity of the samples was found to be dependent on the number of mobile ions and the mobility of the ions. It has been shown that the conducting species in this present work are predominantly due to proton (H+) which was confirmed via FTIR and TNM analysis. The results suggest that BEs system is highly potential to be applied in electrochemical devices, i.e. proton battery and fuel cell.