Mr.Aniruddha Nag,a 1st year doctral student in Kaneko lab. of Energy and Environmental Area, received Outstanding Performance Award for poster presentation in Eco Design · Products & Services Symposium 2016.


■Date Awarded
December 7,2016

■Title
Syntheses of renewable high-performance polybenzimidazoles and their applications for polymeric ionic conductor

■Article
We have prepared imidazole based polymer 2, 5-polybenzimidazole (2, 5-PBI) from 3-amino-4-hydroxybenzoic acid (3, 4-AHBA) which has been successfully synthesized from soil-bacteria Streptomyces sp. This polymer shows very high thermal resistance (Td10 at 630°C) and mechanical strength (Strain 100 MPa and Young's modulus at 9.5 GPa) which can be useful for industrial purposes. As we have used bio-derived monomer for the preparation of the polymer so we don't need to worry about limited resource problem which is a major concern for fossil-fuel based polymers.

Presence of substitutable imidazole (-NH) proton is an important factor for the modification of the polybenzimidazole structure and in our case after modification, Li-ions are free and conductive. They are showing increased Li-ion transference number on addition of plasticizing agent BMImTFSi, they are keeping the stability of the structure even after several charge-discharges cycles because of high thermal and chemical stability. With these results we are thinking of to use this kind of bio-derived polymers in Li-ion batteries.

■Comment
It is my privilege to receive the outstanding performance award in 'Eco-design. Products and services symposium (EcoDePS) 2016' held in Tokyo University of Science, Japan on 7th December. Winning this award will encourage my future research. I would like to convey my sincere gratitude to Professor Tatsuo Kaneko for his constant support, motivation and guidance. I am also immensely grateful to Professor Noriyoshi Matsumi and Prof Raman Vedarajan for their necessary guidance. Lastly I would like to thank Dr. Maiko Okajima, Dr. Seiji Tateyama and Dr. Asif Ali and all my lab colleagues for their continuous support.

December 13,2016