We report the fabrication and use of a paper-based analytical system to study multiple modalities of catalysts utilized for the same global reaction. Presented here is a porous media device that couples quasi-stationary flow, stencil-printed electrodes, and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy zones for rapid determination of catalytic transformations. The methodology of a paper-based platform is extended to demonstrate how multiple chemical reactions can be performed in sequence by use of both enzymes and electrocatalysts. Enzymes play a contributing role in the electrocatalytic conversion of glycerol to carbon dioxide, which is a complex cascade system ^1,2. Specifically, the use of oxalate decarboxylase has been shown to catalyze the conversion of mesoxalic acid (6) to glyoxylic acid (7) and oxalic acid (8) to formic acid (9) as shown in Figure 1. The platform allows rapid determination of catalytically transformed analytes. It also serves as a method for understanding the optimum reaction conditions necessary for using different modalities of catalysts together.

References:

1. Hickey, D. P., McCammant, M. S., Giroud, F., Sigman, M. S. & Minteer, S. D. Hybrid enzymatic and organic electrocatalytic cascade for the complete oxidation of glycerol. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 136, 15917–15920 (2014).
2. Abdellaoui, S., Hickey, D. P., Stephens, A. R. & Minteer, S. D. Recombinant oxalate decarboxylase: enhancement of a hybrid catalytic cascade for the complete electro-oxidation of glycerol. Chem. Commun. 51, 14330–14333 (2015).