Biofuel cells Based on the Immobilization of Photosynthetically Active Bioentities

Abstract

Natural photosynthesis is a highly efficient process that uses sunlight irradiation to convert carbon dioxide into value‐added biomass. This review summarizes the recent advances in the transformation of solar energy into electrical power through the exploitation of photosynthetically active proteins, organelles, and living cells. During the past decade, the considerable progress made in bioentities immobilization offers the possibility to integrate biological systems into electronic devices. Even though solar energy technologies are gaining increasing attention, photosynthetic biofuel cells are still in their infancy. Advances in materials science are necessary to protect, stabilize, and even increase the catalytic performance of bioentities. Moreover, host materials could guarantee higher loading and better electrical charge transport, which would be crucial in the commercial success of biofuel cells. In the future, such semi‐artificial hybrid assemblies could hold promise as sustainable sources of energy.

Immobilization of lipase in cage-type mesoporous organosilicas via covalent bonding and crosslinking

“…The first report on enzyme immobilization onto mesoporous MCM-41 appeared in 1996 [3]. Following the pioneering work by Balkus and co-workers, various enzymes have been immobilized in different mesoporous materials [4][5][6] and the generated bio-inorganic hybrid composites have been explored for many applications including bioanalysis [7], biocatalysis [8,9] and biofuel cells [10,11]. With respect to the support, many factors influence enzyme loading, activity and stability including pore size, pore volume, pore structure, the size and the morphology of particles and surface properties [4].…”

Enzymatic Electrosynthesis: An Overview on the Progress in Enzyme- Electrodes for the Production of Electricity, Fuels and Chemicals

“…Enzymes are usually sensitive and their lifetime is limited but their stability over a long period of time is much crucial for their applications [101,102]. Immobilization of the enzymes onto the solid conductive matrices is an efficient and sustainable solution to confer a high stability and extended lifetime.…”

Integrated photosystem II-based photo-bioelectrochemical cells

“…Different bioelectrochemical devices that implement the RC, PSI and/or PSII as light harnessing components for the activation of PBFCs producing photocurrents [19][20][21][22] , or fuel products [23][24][25] have been proposed. These PBFCs require the immobilization and electrical contacting of the light harnessing components with the electrode supports to the extent that photo-induced electrontransfer processes occur between the photosynthetic RC, thus enabling the generation of photocurrents (or their use for the synthesis of fuel products).…”