Performance Comparison of Microfluidic Enzymatic Biofuel Cell with Electrodes at Different Positions in Microchannel

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Microfluidic enzymatic biofuel cells (μEBFCs) have received significant research attention due to their feasibility to power implantable medical devices. However, typical two-streamflow channel in μEBFC limit their practicality. We propose a new approach to design the single-stream μEBFC based on their performance by placing electrodes at different positions in the microchannel. Multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) electrodes were produced by stencil method which were modified with glucose dehydrogenase and laccase via direct covalent bonding, for bioanode and biocathode, respectively. The best results were attained by placing the cathode at the top and anode at the bottom of the microchannel in a Y-shaped two streamflow μEBFC. With a single stream, we achieve more practicality, but the performance was reduced by 40%. However, 20% of this loss was recovered by applying a new design of electrodes i.e., anode at bottom and cathode at the top facing each other in the microchannel. This corresponds to maximum current and power density of 216 ± 12 μA.cm<SUP>-2</SUP> and 69.2 ± 9.2 μW.cm<SUP>-2</SUP>, respectively. When two devices were stacked, the maximum power density reached 160 μW.cm<SUP>-2</SUP> at 0.3 V. This study validates the feasibility of using single-stream μEBFCs to power microelectronics more simply and practically.