Including Liquid Metal into Porous Elastomeric Films for Flexible and Enzyme-Free Glucose Fuel Cells: A Preliminary Evaluation

This communication introduces a new flexible elastomeric composite film, which can directly convert the chemical energy of glucose into electricity. The fabrication process is simple, and no specific equipment is required. Notably, the liquid metal Galinstan is exploited with a two-fold objective: (...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of low power electronics and applications 2018-12, Vol.8 (4), p.45
Main Authors: Desmaële, Denis, La Malfa, Francesco, Rizzi, Francesco, Qualtieri, Antonio, De Vittorio, Massimo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Catalysis
Chemical energy
Chemical Sciences
Elastomers
Electric power
Electricity
Electrodes
Engineering Sciences
enzyme-free
Enzymes
Fuel cells
Galinstan
Glucose
glucose fuel cell
liquid metal
Liquid metals
Material chemistry
Micro and nanotechnologies
Microelectronics
Morphology
Polydimethylsiloxane
porous gold
Thin films
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Summary:This communication introduces a new flexible elastomeric composite film, which can directly convert the chemical energy of glucose into electricity. The fabrication process is simple, and no specific equipment is required. Notably, the liquid metal Galinstan is exploited with a two-fold objective: (i) Galinstan particles are mixed with polydimethylsiloxane to obtain a highly conductive porous thick film scaffold; (ii) the presence of Galinstan in the composite film enables the direct growth of highly catalytic gold structures. As a first proof of concept, we demonstrate that when immersed in a 20 mM glucose solution, a 5 mm-long, 5 mm-wide and 2 mm-thick sample can generate a volumetric power density up to 3.6 mW·cm − 3 at 7 mA·cm − 3 and 0.51 V without using any enzymes.
ISSN:2079-9268
2079-9268
DOI:10.3390/jlpea8040045