A new type of air-breathing photo-microfluidic fuel cell based on ZnO/Au using human blood as energy source
Introduction
In recent years, applications of fuel cells have been intensified in the medical field either as implantable or non-implantable medical devices [1]. In the last application, the development of microfluidic fuel cells (μFC's) have been recognized as promising candidates for power supply [2,3]. Among the advantages of μFC's are: the elimination of membranes, the use of liquid fuels and oxidants [4], the operation with a single fuel fluid and the adaptation to breathe air from the environment [[5], [6], [7]]. In this sense, in a non-implantable medical device, a liquid sample employed for analysis, i.e. sweat [8], urine [9], or human blood [10], can also be used as fuel due to its content of lactic acid, urea and glucose, respectively. Therefore, the use of blood in the μFC's has been increased because many non-implantable medical devices use it in order to obtain medical diagnostic [[11], [12], [13]]. The evaluation of a glucose-μFC could be divided into three categories, i.e. ideal condition, near physiological condition and real condition. In a real condition, the sample of human serum and human blood are the source of glucose to be oxidized.
The search for catalytic materials that oxidize the glucose available in the human serum or human blood employed in μFC's devices has been mainly addressed towards the use of enzymes such as glucose oxidase and glucose dehydrogenase [2,3]. Nevertheless, the relatively short duration of the enzyme activity makes necessary to consider the use of precious metals that allow long-term stable performance and high power of the μFC's. Precious metals like Au supported on vulcan carbon or multi-walled carbon nanotubes have drawn attention for glucose oxidation. Gold, in the macroscale, is practically inert, however, when is synthesized as nanoparticles (usually < 10 nm), its reactivity strongly changes, having a considerable ability to catalyze oxidation reactions like glucose oxidation [14,15].
A tendency towards the use of materials that increase the power generated from the μFC's has been of great interest [16,17]. In this respect, the use of photoactive materials as support such as ZnO has been increased and [16], due to its low cost, easy of synthesis, relatively low optical band gap, high mobility of conduction electrons and its environmental stability [[18], [19], [20], [21]]. Besides, ZnO has shown its capacity as support and improves its performance when combining with Au- nanoparticles, despite this, ZnO/Au has not been used in μFC's [22,23]. Specifically, ZnO/Au material has been widely reported for glucose detection in microfluidic sensors and direct glucose fuel cells [[24], [25], [26]].
In the present work, we synthesized ZnO microparticles with six-blade impeller morphology and coated with different Au nanoparticles percentages (1, 2 and 3%) and in order to know if these ZnO/Au composites would serve as an anode for glucose photo/electro-oxidation in a μFC, their photo- and electrochemical activities were analyzed. Starting from the above, the objective of the following research was the fabrication of a μFC in a real application when human blood was used as fuel and air coming from environment as oxidant. The novelty of this work is the use of photo-catalysts materials in microdevices for power generation, which has not been widely studied, thus a new concept of a photo-microfluidic fuel cell was created. Also, in real applications, these photo-microfluidic fuel cells, based on the studied materials, could be an alternative to power-up non-implantable medical devices.
Section snippets
Reagents
ZnCl2 (>97%), NaOH (>97%) and SDS (>99%) were acquired from Jalmek (Mexico). Chloroauric acid (HAuCl4), hydrazine (N2H4) both with purities > 98% and glucose (reagent grade) were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. KOH (98%) and isopropyl alcohol (98%) were purchased from J.T. Baker. Distilled grade water was used in the synthesis and purification.
Synthesis of ZnO and ZnO/Au nanoparticles
ZnO microparticles with six-blade impeller and cabbage-like morphologies were synthesized as reported elsewhere [20] and is briefly described: 8.2 g of
Morphology and optical properties
Fig. 2 shows the SEM images of the ZnO and ZnO/Au composites. It can be observed from Fig. 2a that ZnO microparticles consisted of agglomerates resembling morphologies of six blade impeller- and cabbage-like which are constructed of micrometric bi-dimensional sheets with sizes between 1 and 2 μm. Also, the Au nanoparticles are present onto the ZnO crystals as brilliant small dots (Fig. 2b and d) of sizes between 6 and 50 nm with average diameter of 40 nm. Table 1 shows the elemental
Conclusions
ZnO/Au composites were synthesized through an easy process with different Au content. The optical band gap of ZnO and its composites was 3.15 eV independent of the Au concentration, showing the typical surface plasmon resonance between 530 and 550 nm, which decreased as the Au content increased, due to the average particle size and particle size distributions of Au. The ZnO/Au composites were tested in the glucose electro-oxidation, where the minimum negative potential shift of the glucose
Acknowledgements
Author V.M.O.M acknowledges to National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT), Mexico the financial support through grant #2017-INFR-280299. The authors A. Dector and J. M. Olivares-Ramírez gratefully acknowledge CONACYT for Cátedra CONACYT project 513.
References (47)
- et al.
The applications and prospect of fuel cells in medical field: a review
Renew Sustain Energy Rev
(2017) - et al.
Perspective use of direct human blood as an energy source in air-breathing hybrid microfluidic fuel cells
J Power Sources
(2015) - et al.
Towards autonomous lateral flow assays: paper-based microfluidic fuel cell inside an HIV-test using a blood sample as fuel
Int J Hydrogen Energy
(2017) - et al.
Microfluidic fuel cells: a review
J Power Sources
(2009) - et al.
Air-breathing microfluidic fuel cell with fuel reservoir
J Power Sources
(2012) - et al.
Electrooxidation study of methanol using H2O2 and air as mixed oxidant at cathode in air breathing microfluidic fuel cell
Int J Hydrogen Energy
(2016) - et al.
A new type of high performance air-breathing glucose membraneless microfluidic fuel cell
Int J Hydrogen Energy
(2015) - et al.
Novel flexible enzyme laminate-based sensor for analysis of lactate in sweat
Sens Actuators B Chem
(2017) - et al.
Selected optoelectronic sensors in medical applications
Opto-Electron Rev
(2018) - et al.
Validity of glucose measurements in the blood by a glucometer reagent strip in critically ill infants
Diabetes Metab Syndr Clin Res Rev
(2019)
Glucose microfluidic fuel cell using air as oxidant
Int J Hydrogen Energy
Maghemite as a catalyst for glucose oxidation in a microfluidic fuel cell
J Electroanal Chem
Hybrid microfluidic fuel cell based on Laccase/C and AuAg/C electrodes
Biosens Bioelectron
Light-harvesting Ni/TiO2 nanotubes as photo-electrocatalyst for alcohol oxidation in alkaline media
Electrochim Acta
A dual fuel microfluidic fuel cell utilizing solar energy and methanol
J Power Sources
Preparation and application of granular ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst for the removal of hazardous trichloroethylene
J Hazard Mater
Photocatalytic decomposition of perfluorooctanoic acid by transition-metal modified titanium dioxide
J Hazard Mater
Photocatalytic decomposition of perfluorooctanoic acid by iron and niobium co-doped titanium dioxide
J Hazard Mater
Glucose sensor using periodic nanostructured hybrid 1D Au/ZnO arrays
Mater Sci Eng C
A membraneless single compartment abiotic glucose fuel cell
J Power Sources
Synthesis and optical properties of flower-like ZnO nanorods by thermal evaporation method
Appl Surf Sci
Micro-Raman and XPS studies of pure ZnO ceramics
Phys B Condens Matter
Synthesis of nanowires, nanorods and nanoparticles of ZnO through modulating the ratio of water to methanol by using a mild and simple solution method
Mater Chem Phys
Cited by (20)
Photocatalytic fuel cells: From batch to microfluidics
2022, Journal of Environmental Chemical EngineeringCitation Excerpt :Their fuel cell produced 5.93 mW cm−2 at 1.0 V [128], the benchmark among the µPFC under UV irradiation (Table 4). Physiologic samples have been used aiming at energy conversion and diagnostics, leading to self-powered systems [82,127]. The µPFC with a Ni-TiO2 anode fed by urine developed by Dector et al. [127] showed 0.70 V as OCV, 1.7 mA cm−2 of maximum current density, and 0.09 mW cm−2 of power density (Table 4).
TiO<inf>2</inf> quantum dots/reduced graphene oxide composite modified with Au for electrochemical oxidation reaction
2022, International Journal of Hydrogen EnergyNew insight on the mechanism of vibration effects in vapor-feed microfluidic fuel cell
2021, EnergyCitation Excerpt :At the micro level, the effects of electrode internal structure and the catalyst activity on cell performance have attached much attention. Strategies include the employment of electrode arrays or porous electrodes [24–26], various compositions of catalyst, such as carbon-based catalysts (graphene, multi-walled carbon nanotubes) [27,28], noble metal catalysts (Au, Ag, Pd, Pt) [29–32], and even organic catalysts [33–35]. Removal of proton membrane allows the MFC freer than conventional membrane fuel cell on the choice of fuel, oxidant and electrolyte.
Microfluidic fuel cells with different types of fuels: A prospective review
2021, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews