Transparent and flexible, nanostructured and mediatorless glucose/oxygen enzymatic fuel cells

Abstract

h i g h l i g h t sTransparent and flexible enzymatic fuel cells were fabricated and characterised. The glucose/oxygen utilising devices were nanostructured, membrane-less and mediator-free. Nanoimprint lithography was used for nanostructuring of polymer based electrodes. Nanostructured electrodes were metallised and biomodified. This type of biodevice could potentially be used in smart electronic contact lenses. Here we detail transparent, flexible, nanostructured, membrane-less and mediator-free glucose/oxygen enzymatic fuel cells, which can be reproducibly fabricated with industrial scale throughput. The electrodes were built on a biocompatible flexible polymer, while nanoimprint lithography was used for their nanostructuring. The electrodes were covered with gold, their surfaces were visualised using scanning electron and atomic force microscopies, and they were also studied spectrophotometrically and electrochemically. The enzymatic fuel cells were fabricated following our previous reports on membrane-less and mediator-free biodevices in which cellobiose dehydrogenase and bilirubin oxidase were used as anodic and cathodic biocatalysts, respectively. The following average characteristics of transparent and flexible biodevices operating in glucose and chloride containing neutral buffers were registered: 0.63 V open-circuit voltage, and 0.6 mW cm À2 maximal power density at a cell voltage of 0.35 V. A transparent and flexible enzymatic fuel cell could still deliver at least 0.5 mW cm À2 after 12 h of continuous operation.Thus, such biodevices can potentially be used as self-powered biosensors or electric power sources for smart electronic contact lenses.

Transparent and Capacitive Bioanode Based on Specifically Engineered Glucose Oxidase

“…Moreover, a significant capacitance contribution to the registered current output should be also taken into account. Nevertheless, the registered current outputs from the optimized transparent bioanodes at low glucose concentrations were much higher compared to previously reported current densities of rigid opaque glucose oxidizing enzymatic electrodes based on AuNPs 6, or flexible transparent enzymatic anodes based on Au nanostructured polymer electrodes 47, operating in 0.05 mM and 5 mM glucose solutions, respectively.…”

Wearable Biofuel Cells: A Review

“…In this work the authors relied on first modifying gold microwires with gold nanoparticles and subsequently immobilized with cellobiose dehydrogenase and bilirubin oxidase to obtain glucose‐oxidizing bioanode and oxygen‐reducing biocathode, respectively. Though the researchers did not perform on‐body evaluation of the biofuel cell, studies analyzing the ability of the biofuel cell to generate electricity from separately collected human sweat reveal that the biofuel cell could produce 0.26 µW/cm 2 at 0.5 m. The group also developed nanoimprint‐based gold electrodes and modified them with enzyme to obtain a flexible and transparent glucose biofuel cell 52.…”

Tear Based Bioelectronics

“…In the end, we report on our recent work concerning transparent, flexible, nanostructured, membrane‐less and mediator‐free glucose/oxygen enzymatic fuel cells, which can be reproducibly fabricated with industrial scale throughput (Fig. 23) 55. The electrodes of the BFCs were built on a biocompatible flexible polymer covered with a thin Au layer, using nanoimprint lithography for nanostructuring, while CDH and BOx were used as anodic and cathodic biocatalysts, respectively.…”