1. Perspective use of direct human blood as an energy source in air-breathing hybrid microfluidic fuel cells.
- Author
-
Dector, A., Escalona-Villalpando, R.A., Dector, D., Vallejo-Becerra, V., Chávez-Ramírez, A.U., Arriaga, L.G., and Ledesma-García, J.
- Subjects
- *
BLOOD testing , *POWER resources , *MICROFLUIDICS , *HYBRID power systems , *GLUCOSE oxidase , *GLUTARALDEHYDE , *MULTIWALLED carbon nanotubes - Abstract
This work presents a flexible and light air-breathing hybrid microfluidic fuel cell (HμFC) operated under biological conditions. A mixture of glucose oxidase, glutaraldehyde, multi-walled carbon nanotubes and vulcan carbon (GOx/VC-MWCNT-GA) was used as the bioanode. Meanwhile, integrating an air-exposed electrode (Pt/C) as the cathode enabled direct oxygen delivery from air. The microfluidic fuel cell performance was evaluated using glucose obtained from three different sources as the fuel: 5 mM glucose in phosphate buffer, human serum and human blood. For the last fuel, an open circuit voltage and maximum power density of 0.52 V and 0.20 mW cm −2 (at 0.38 V) were obtained respectively; meanwhile the maximum current density was 1.1 mA cm −2 . Furthermore, the stability of the device was measured in terms of recovery after several polarization curves, showing excellent results. Although this air-breathing HμFC requires technological improvements before being tested in a biomedical device, it represents the best performance to date for a microfluidic fuel cell using human blood as glucose source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF