Miniaturized batteries containing corrosive liquid electrolytes are commonly utilised as power sources in IMDs, however electrolyte leakage can trigger transplant rejection and harm to adjacent tissues.
These problems can be efficiently addressed by transient power sources with great bioresorbability and biocompatibility. The EBFC (enzymatic biofuel cells) is an appropriate device for converting biological energy into electricity and providing reliable and continuous power outputs. Furthermore, EBFC can be designed as an ultrathin and soft device to diminish the sense of a foreign body at the implantation site. As a result, EBFCs have attracted a lot of interest for implantable and wearable device applications.
Because of their superior electrical characteristics, biocompatibility, and huge surface area, carbon nanomaterials are widely employed as electrodes in EBFCs. Using an infrared carbon dioxide (CO2) laser, a thin coating of graphene can be fabricated from polyimide (PI).
Certain functional materials, such as nano-metal particles and conductive polymers, are utilised as dopants in EBFCs and enzymatic sensors to improve the output performance or sensitivity of the sensors. Due to their enormous surface area, conductivity, and biocompatibility, gold NPs are the most suited doping materials compared to other dopants.
Researchers created ultrathin, implantable TEBFCs (transient enzymatic biofuel cells) based on gold NPs/LIG composite electrodes and assessed their effectiveness in this study. The LIG/gold NPs composite electrode has a large surface area and a low impedance, allowing electron transport between electrode surfaces and enzyme active sites to be expedited. To recapitulate, the results of this work showed that TEBFCs based on LIG/gold NPs composite electrodes have a lot of potential as an energy source for IMDs and transient electronics. Furthermore, the synthesised TEBFCs can be tailored to the needs of the implantation sites and output intensities.
This study titled “Transient, Implantable, Ultrathin Biofuel Cells Enabled by Laser-Induced Graphene and Gold Nanoparticles Composite” was published in the journal ACS Publications. You can read it here.
