Generating Electricity from Biofluid with a Nanowire-Based Biofuel Cell for Self-Powered Nanodevices

摘要

We report a nanowire-based biofuel cell based on a single proton conductive polymer nanowire for converting chemical energy from biofluids, such as glucose/ blood, into electricity, with glucose oxi-dase and laccase as catalyst. The glucose is supplied from the biofluid, the nanowire serves as the proton conductor, and the whole cell can be realized at the nano/micrometer scale. The biofuel cell composed of a single nanowire generates an output power as high as 0.5-3 μW, and it has been integrated with a set of nanowire-based sensors for performing self-powered sensing. This study shows the feasibility of building self-powered nanodevices for the biological sciences, environmental monitoring, defense technology, and even personal electronics.