Reactive oxygen species accelerate degradation of anion exchange membranes based on polyphenylene oxide in alkaline environments.

Anion exchange membranes (AEM) based on polyphenylene oxide (PPO) suffered quaternary-ammonium-cation-site degradation in alkaline environments. Surprisingly, the degradation rate was considerably faster in the presence of molecular oxygen. We postulated that the AEM cation-site catalyzes the reduction of dioxygen by hydroxide ions to yield the superoxide anion radical and the highly reactive hydroxyl free radical. We substantiated our hypothesis by using a phosphorous-containing spin trap (5-diisopropoxy-phosphoryl-5-methyl-1-pyrroline-N-oxide) to detect the adducts for both free radicals in situ using (31)P-NMR spectroscopy.