Miniaturized polymeric enzymatic biofuel cell with integrated microfluidic device and enhanced laser ablated bioelectrodes

Abstract

The present work establishes a simple, customized, and economical laser-induced graphene (LIG) material produced using a CO2 laser. The one-step LIG bioelectrodes have been further validated for Enzymatic Biofuel Cell (EBFC) application by integrating them into a microfluidic device, fabricated by the conventional soft-lithography on Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). This electrode and device manufacturing technology delivers a simple and quick fabrication method, which eliminates the necessity of any further amendment and post-processing. LIG electrodes were created at optimized CO2 laser (5.1 W power and 0.625 cm s−1 speed) irradiation which has been further modified by Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT), called C-LIG electrodes, which offers improved performance and enzyme stability. In this novel study, CNT functionalized LIG electrodes have been incorporated into a microfluidic device for biofuel cell applications. LIG and C-LIG bioelectrodes have been integrated into a microfluidic device under the laminar fluid flow regime and the electrochemical and polarization study of the platform have been carried out. This C-LIG bioelectrodes integrated microfluidic device, without any metal catalyst, generated 2.2 μW/cm2 power density with an optimized 200 μl/min flow rate which is 1.37 times higher than the LIG bioelectrodes. Such novel and simple EBFC platform is amenable to further improvement for generating even more power output by optimizing the LIG formation, alternate nano-functionalisation and mediator based electrochemical analysis.