Sen, UnalOzdemir, MehmetErkartal, MustafaKaya, Alaattin MetinManda, Abdullah A.Oveisi, Ali RezaAli Aboudzadeh, M.Tokumasu, Takashi2022-03-052022-03-0520212227-9717https //doi.org/10.3390/pr9060984https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12573/1242U. Sen was supported by JSPS RONPAKU (Dissertation PhD) program with ID No. TUR 11008.Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) composed of polymer or polymer blend is a vital element in PEM fuel cell that allows proton transport and serves as a barrier between fuel and oxygen. Understanding the microscopic phase behavior in polymer blends is very crucial to design alternative cost-effective proton-conducting materials. In this study, the mesoscale morphologies of Nafion/poly(1-vinyl-1,2,4-triazole) (Nafion-PVTri) and Nafion/poly(vinyl phosphonic acid) (Nafion-PVPA) blend membranes were studied by dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulation technique. Simulation results indicate that both blend membranes can form a phase-separated microstructure due to the different hydrophobic and hydrophilic character of different polymer chains and different segments in the same polymer chain. There is a strong, attractive interaction between the phosphonic acid and sulfonic acid groups and a very strong repulsive interaction between the fluorinated and phosphonic acid groups in the Nafion-PVPA blend membrane. By increasing the PVPA content in the blend membrane, the PVPA clusters' size gradually increases and forms a continuous phase. On the other hand, repulsive interaction between fluorinated and triazole units in the Nafion-PVTri blend is not very strong compared to the Nafion-PVPA blend, which results in different phase behavior in Nafion-PVTri blend membrane. This relatively lower repulsive interaction causes Nafion-PVTri blend membrane to have non-continuous phases regardless of the composition.enginfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessdissipative particle dynamicsNafionmesoscale morphologypoly(1-vinyl-1,2,4-triazole)poly(vinylphosphonic acid)articleVolume 9 Issue 6