Abstract Water electrolysis is an environment-friendly process of producing hydrogen with zero-carbon emission. Herein, we studied the water vapor electrolysis using a proton-conducting membrane composed of graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets intercalated with cations (Al3+ and Ce3+). We examined the effect of cation introduction on the physical and chemical structures, morphology, thermal and chemical stabilities, and the proton conductivity of stacked GO nanosheet membranes by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), thermogravimetric-differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Concentration cell measurements revealed that the cation-modified membranes are pure proton conductors at room temperature. The proton conductivity of a GO membrane was much improved by cation modification. The cation-modified GO membranes, sandwiched with Pt/C electrodes as the cathode and anode, electrolyzed humidified air to produce hydrogen at room temperature, indicating the feasibility of this carbon-based electrochemical device.

中文翻译：

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使用阳离子改性氧化石墨烯膜从潮湿空气中电化学制氢

摘要 水电解是一种零碳排放的环保制氢工艺。在此，我们使用由嵌入阳离子（Al3+ 和 Ce3+）的氧化石墨烯 (GO) 纳米片组成的质子传导膜研究了水蒸气电解。我们通过 X 射线衍射 (XRD)、傅里叶变换红外光谱 (FT-IR)、X射线光发射光谱 (XPS)、拉曼光谱、原子力显微镜 (AFM)、动态光散射 (DLS)、热重-差热分析 (TG-DTA) 和电化学阻抗光谱 (EIS)。浓缩池测量表明，阳离子改性膜在室温下是纯质子导体。GO 膜的质子传导性通过阳离子改性得到了很大改善。阳离子改性的 GO 膜夹着 Pt/C 电极作为阴极和阳极，在室温下电解加湿空气以产生氢气，表明这种碳基电化学装置的可行性。