Abstract
This review focuses on recent advances in micro- and nano-fabrication techniques and their applications to electrochemical power devices, specifically microfabricated Lithium-ion batteries, enzymatic and microbial fuel cells (biofuel cells), and dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Although the maturity of these three technologies ranges from market ready (batteries) to fundamental research (biofuel cells) to applied research (DSSCs), advances in MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) and NEMS (Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems) techniques, particularly modifications in surface area and surface chemistry, and novel genetic and molecular engineering techniques, significantly improve the electrochemical activity of these technologies across the board. For each of these three categories of power-MEMS devices the review covers: (1) The technical challenges facing the performance and fabrication of electrochemical power devices; (2) Current MEMS and NEMS techniques used to improve efficiency; and (3) Future outlook and suggested improvements of MEMS and NEMS for implementation in electrochemical power devices.
Highlights
One of the greatest challenges facing modern society is the need for low cost, smart, and sustainable power conversion and energy storage systems
To get a broad scope of the extent of research in this direction, we will focus our attention on devices where the utilization of new MEMS and NEMS techniques for their improvement lies at three different stages of research: Mature and commercially available lithium-ion batteries, semi-mature enzymatic, and microbial biofuel cells where nanomaterial morphologies lie in the stage of fundamental research, and dye-sensitized solar cells, where nanostructured architectures lie in the stage of applied research
The second set of experiments by Zebda [79] used napthoquinone as the mediator for mediated electron transfer (MET) in the carbon nanotubes (CNT) matrix and glucose oxidase (GOx), achieving the highest maximum power output reported for a glucose biofuel cell (GBFC) to date: 1.54 mW·cm−2
Summary
One of the greatest challenges facing modern society is the need for low cost, smart, and sustainable power conversion and energy storage systems. Structured nanoelectrodes have been shown to greatly improve the mass transport of electrochemical processes, yielding electrodes with much higher current densities and sensors with much larger sensitivities [3] Despite these breakthroughs, there still remain significant technical obstacles preventing the commercialization and widespread use of many advanced electrochemical MEMS- and NEMS (Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems)-based energy and power systems. To get a broad scope of the extent of research in this direction, we will focus our attention on devices where the utilization of new MEMS and NEMS techniques for their improvement lies at three different stages of research: Mature and commercially available lithium-ion batteries, semi-mature enzymatic, and microbial biofuel cells where nanomaterial morphologies lie in the stage of fundamental research, and dye-sensitized solar cells, where nanostructured architectures lie in the stage of applied research. We will discuss the potential of utilizing dye sensitized solar cells to produce a ―solar battery‖ that converts sunlight into usable energy but can store energy as chemical potential
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