Fundamental studies on the intermediate layer of a bipolar membrane: Part III. Effect of starburst dendrimer PAMAM on water dissociation at the interface of a bipolar membrane

Starburst dendrimer polyamidoamine (PAMAM) with ellipsoidal or spheroidal shape is structure-regular and has much more amino groups than conventional polymers. This paper investigates the possibility of these amino groups on water dissociation in a bipolar membrane interface. To do this, a bipolar membrane is prepared by casting the solution of sulfonated poly(phenylene oxide) (SPPO) in dimethyl formamide (DMF) on a commercial anion exchange membrane that is immersed in PAMAM aqueous solution in advance. The existence of PAMAM adsorbed on the membrane is proved by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and the adsorption amount is evaluated by weighting method. The junction thickness of the prepared bipolar membrane is determined by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and the performance is evaluated by current–voltage curves. The experiments show that both the generation and concentration of PAMAM would strongly affect the characteristics of the bipolar membranes. There exists a transitional concentration for various generations PAMAMs to catalyze effectively the water dissociation, and above or below the transitional concentration the performance of bipolar membranes is decreasing. The higher the generation, the lower the concentration. Moreover, at a fixed solution concentration, there is not the simple relation of monotone decreasing or increasing between the performance of bipolar membranes and the generations of PAMAMs. All these can be explained according to the characteristics of PAMAMs combined with available water dissociation theory.