Fabrication of Chitosan Porous Structure and Applications on Artificial Photosynthesis Device

Abstract

Research and development on artificial photosynthesis provide a new direction to obtain sustainable energy. To increase the artificial photosynthesis reaction rates and the efficiency of collecting the energy product, a novel artificial photosynthesis device was designed and developed to constrain the photosynthesis reactions in chitosan porous structure. Both 3D printing and molding-casting could be used in fabrication of chitosan structure on artificial photosynthesis devices. In molding and casting, the molds were made by acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Concurrently, 3D interconnected chitosan channels were built with a user-made heterogeneous 3D rapid prototyping machine, and the lyophilization method was used to generate the micro or nano pores inside the chitosan scaffold. After lyophilization, the pore size and porosity was generated by MATLAB image processing. CO2 absorption was simulated based on porous structures properties when import the chitosan into the artificial photosynthesis devices. The results suggested that chitosan porous structure is a good candidate to be an interface between atmosphere and micro-fluidic devices with biochemical reactions.