Biocatalytic fuel cells cathodes

Contrary to traditional fuel cells, biocatalytic fuel cells are in principle very simple in design [1], Fuel cells are usually made of two half-cell electrodes, the anode and cathode, separated by an electrolyte and a membrane that should avoid mixing of the fuel and oxidant at both electrodes, while allowing the diffusion of ions to/from the electrodes. The electrodes and membrane assembly needs to be sealed and mounted in a case from which plumbing allows the fuel and oxidant delivery to the anode and cathode, respectively, and exhaustion of the reaction products. In contrast, the simplicity of the biocatalytic fuel cell design rests on the specificity of the catalyst brought upon by the use of enzymes. 

Provided that the required enzymes can be immobilized at, and electrically communicated with, the surface of an electrode, with retention of their high catalytic properties and there is no electrolysis of fuel at the cathode or oxidant at the anode, or a solution redox reaction between fuel and oxidant, the biocatalytic fuel cell then simply... 

FIGURE 12.1 Schematic depiction of a biocatalytic fuel cell, with fuel oxidation by a biocatalyst (Cat) at the anode and oxidant reduction by a biocatalyst (Cat ) at the cathode, in a membraneless assembly, providing power to the load. 

In redox mediation, to have an effective electron exchange, the thermodynamic redox potentials of the enzyme and the mediator have to be accurately matched. For biocatalytic electrodes, efficient mediators must have redox potentials downhill from the redox potential of the enzyme a 50 mV difference is proposed to be optimal [1, 18]. The tuning of these potentials is a compromise between the need to have a high cell voltage and a high catalytic current. Furthermore, an obvious requirement is that the mediator must be stable in the reduced and oxidized states. Finally, for operation of a membraneless miniaturized biocatalytic fuel cell, the mediators for both the anode and the cathode must be immobilized to prevent power dissipation by solution redox reactions between them. 

Figure 24. (A) Schematic configuration of a noncompartmentalized biofuel cell employing glucose and O as fuel and oxidizer, and using PQQ- FAD/GOx- and Cyt c/COx-functionalized electrodes as biocatalytic anode and cathode, respectively. (B) Current-voltage behavior of the biofuel cell at different external loads. Inset electrical power extracted from the biofuel cell at different external...

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