Membraneless enzymatic biofuel cells based on graphene nanosheets

Abstract

The possibility of employing graphene sheets as a potential candidate for the construction of biofuel cells is reported in this paper. Initially, graphene sheets were chemically synthesized and characterized by surface characterization techniques. Following this, graphene was employed to fabricate the anode and cathode in the biofuel cell. The anode of the biofuel cell consists of a gold electrode on which we co-immobilized graphene - glucose oxidase using silica sol-gel matrix. Voltammetric measurements were conducted to quantitatively evaluate the suitability of employing graphene sheets as an electrode dopant and its performance was compared with single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). The cathode of the biofuel cell was constructed in a similar method except that graphene was co-immobilized with bilirubin oxidase. Finally, two membraneless enzymatic biofuel cells, one using graphene sheets and the other using SWCNTs, were constructed and their performances were compared. Upon comparison, graphene based biofuel cell exhibited a maximum power density of about 24.3+/-4 microW (N=3), which is nearly two times greater than that of the SWCNTs biofuel cell, and the performance of the graphene biofuel cell lasted for 7 days.