Electrical communication between an enzyme and an electrode is one of the most important factors in determining the performance of biofuel cells. Here, we introduce a glucose oxidase-coated metallic cotton fiber-based hybrid biofuel cell with efficient electrical communication between the anodic enzyme and the conductive support. Gold nanoparticles are layer-by-layer assembled with small organic linkers onto cotton fibers to form metallic cotton fibers with extremely high conductivity (>2.1×104 S cm−1), and are used as an enzyme-free cathode as well as a conductive support for the enzymatic anode. For preparation of the anode, the glucose oxidase is sequentially layer-by-layer-assembled with the same linkers onto the metallic cotton fibers. The resulting biofuel cells exhibit a remarkable power density of 3.7 mW cm−2, significantly outperforming conventional biofuel cells. Our strategy to promote charge transfer through electrodes can provide an important tool to improve the performance of biofuel cells.

One of the most critical issues in preparing high-performance transparent supercapacitors (TSCs) is to overcome the trade-off between areal capacitance and optical transmittance as well as that between areal capacitance and rate capability. Herein, we introduce a TSC with high areal capacitance, fast rate capability, and good optical transparency by minimizing the charge transfer resistance between pseudocapacitive nanoparticles (NPs) using molecular linker-and conductive NPmediated layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly. For this study, bulky ligand-stabilized manganese oxide (MnO) and indium tin oxide (ITO) NP multilayers are LbL-assembled through a ligand exchange reaction between native ligands and small multidentate linkers (tricarballylic acid). The introduced molecular linker substantially decreases the separation distance between neighboring NPs, thereby reducing the contact resistance of electrodes. Moreover, the periodic insertion of ITO NPs into the MnO NP-based electrodes can lower the charge transfer resistance without a meaningful loss of transmittance, which can significantly improve the areal capacitance. The areal capacitances of the ITO NP-free electrode and the ITO NP-incorporated electrode are 24.6 mF cm −2 (at 61.6% transmittance) and 40.5 mF cm −2 (at 60.8%), respectively, which outperforms state of the art TSCs. Furthermore, we demonstrate a flexible symmetric solid-state TSC that exhibits scalable areal capacitance and optical transmittance.

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Au nanoparticle-coated highly conductive carbon fiber electrodes for high-power glucose-biofuel cells were developed based on a layer-by-layer assembling method.