Glucose fuel cell holds promise for implanted medical devices

The new fuel cell is claimed to provide twice as much power as conventional biofuel cells and could be paired with batteries or supercapacitors to provide a hybrid power source for the medical devices.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GATECH) and Korea University said that gold nanoparticles assembled on the cotton created high-conductivity electrodes that helped improve the fuel cell's efficiency. That allowed them to address one of the major challenges limiting the performance of biofuel cells, namely connecting the enzyme used to oxidise glucose with an electrode.

A layer-by-layer assembly technique used to fabricate the gold electrodes - which provide the electrocatalytic cathode and the conductive substrate for the anode - helped boost the power capacity to as much as 3.7mW/cm². Results of the research are reported in Nature Communications.

"We could use this device as a continuous power source for converting chemical energy from glucose in the body to electrical energy," said Seung Woo Lee, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. "The layer-by-layer deposition technique precisely controls deposition of both the gold nanoparticle and enzyme, dramatically increasing the power density of this fuel cell."