Wednesday, 16 May 2018: 11:00
Room 615 (Washington State Convention Center)
Recent studies have focused on tailoring the catalytic currents of multicopper oxidase (MCO) enzymes-based biocathodes to enhance oxygen reduction. Biocathodes modified with natural substrates specific for MCO enzymes demonstrated drastic improvement for oxygen reduction. Performance of 1- pyrenebutanoic acid, succinimidyl ester (PBSE) and 2,5- dimethyl-1-phenyl-1H-pyrrole-3-carbaldehyde (Di-Carb) oriented bilirubin oxidase (BOx) modified gas diffusion biocathode has been drastically improved by incorporating, a porphyrin precursor as electron transfer moiety. Porphyrin precursor modified electrodes demonstrated direct electron transfer reaction of BOx exhibiting larger O2 reduction current density in phosphate buffer solution (pH 7.0) without the need of a mediator. A remarkable improvement in the catalytic currents with 2.5 fold increase was achieved compared to non-modified oriented BOx electrodes. Moreover, a mediator-less and compartment-less Glucose/O2 biofuel cell based on direct electron transfer (DET) type bioelectrocatalysis via the BOx-cathode and the glucose dehydrogenase (GDH)-anode demonstrated peak power densities of 1mW/cm2 at pH 7.0 with 100mM glucose/10mM NAD fuel. The maximum current density of 1.6mA/cm2 and the maximum power density of 0.4mW/cm2 were achieved at 300mV with non modified BOx cathode, while 3.5mA/cm2 and 1.1mW/cm2 of current and power density was achieved with porphyrin precursor modified cathode. The performance improved 2.4 times which attributes to the porphyrin precursor acting as a natural substrate and activator for BOx activity enhancement.