Département de chimie moléculaire

Enzymic fuel cells use enzymes to produce energy from bioavailable substrates. However, such biofuel cells are limited by the difficult elec. wiring of enzymes to the electrode. Here we show the efficient wiring of enzymes in a conductive pure carbon nanotube matrix for the fabrication of a glucose biofuel cell (GBFC). Glucose oxidase and laccase were resp. incorporated in carbon nanotube disks by mech. compression. The characterization of each bioelectrode shows an open circuit potential corresponding to the redox potential of the resp. enzymes, and high current densities for glucose oxidn. and oxygen redn. The mediatorless GBFC delivers a high power d. up to 1.3 mW/cm-2 and an open circuit voltage of 0.95 V. Moreover, the GBFC remains stable for 1 mo and delivers lm/W/cm-2 power d. under physiol. conditions (5 × 10-3 mol/l-1 glucose, pH 7). To date, these values are the best performances obtained for a GBFC. [on SciFinder(R)]