The solid alkaline electrolyte membranes have been succesfully prepared from poly(vinylalcohol) (PVA)

poly(vinyl alcohol)/poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVA/PVP) and poly(vinyl alcohol)/poly(ethylene glycol) dimethyl ether (PVA/PEGDE) by doping different concentrations of KOH aquaous solutions.The morphology

microstructure

thermal stability

ionic conductivity and chemical stability of the membranes were investigated in detail.The wholly compact and homogeneous composite membranes were obtained due to the good compatibility between PVA and PVP and/or PEGDE

and no obvious phase seperation was observed.The ionic conductivity of the composite membranes was enhanced greatly with increasing the content of PVP and/or PEGDE in polymer.The measured conductivity of the membranes reached as high as up to 210-3 Scm-1 by addition 100% content of PVP and 1.4310-3 Scm-1by addition 25% content of PEGDE.The obtained PVA/PVP and PVA/PEGDE membranes exhibited excellent thermal stability and alkaline tolerance where no obvious decrease in ionic conductivty was observed even after the membrane being treated in 10 molL-1 KOH at an elevated temperature of 80℃.FTIR spectra results suggested that the KOH absorption of the membranes increased at elevated treatment temperatures

which gave rise to an increase in the OH- charge carriers density.In addition

the methanol uptake of PVA/PVP/KOH and PVA/PEGDE/KOH membranes showed almost no changes after conditioned at elevated temperatures and

were 4 times lower than that of Nafion115 membrane after conditioned at 100℃.It could indicate a potential feasibility as a promising PVA based solid alkaline electrolyte membrane for alkaline fuel cells.