| The field of biofuel cell research has growth quickly within the last few decades due in large part to the growing technology and research done on miniaturization and micro- and nanotechnologies. The development of carbon electrodes and carbon MEMS have facilitated this growth even further. Biofuel cell, particularly, enzymatic biofuel cells have great potential in improving the ability to develop smaller and more efficient implantable devices. Due in large part to the fact that the fuel for these fuel cell can be find within the human body and the compatibility of carbon in physiological environment, biofuel cells can greatly reduce bulk of the power source for implantable device. Unfortunately, biofuel at its current stages due not have high enough activity or long lifetimes to meet the demands for most of these implantable devices.;To address these issues facing biofuel cells, our group decided to utilize highly electroactive carbon MEMS electrodes to achieve high electrode activity for our biofuel cells. We chose to use pyrolytic carbon MEMS electrode due to its high stability and electronic conductivity, but these electrode had a shortcoming of being relatively hard to functionalize. So we set out to develop our own method of immobilization of enzymes using amine electro-oxidation of Amino-benzoic Acid (ABA) and ethylene diamine (EDA). Coupled with helpful mediators, amino-anthracene and 2,5-dihydroxybenzaldehyde for the cathode and anode, respectively, we were able to functionalize and immobilize glucose oxidase for the anode and Laccase for the cathode and achieve extremely high electrode activity. |
