Fuel cell sensor and biosensor based on Prussian blue nanotube membrane

Abstract

In this thesis, we presented a system of fuel cell sensor and biosensor with simple two-compartment design based on a Prussian blue nanotubes membrane. Firstly, we proposed a unique Prussian blue nanotubes sensor using a two-compartment cell derives the current signal from the chemical energy of the hydrogen peroxide analyte, without input of electrical potentials. This strategy can be further demonstrated in a model glucose biosensor when coupling with glucose oxidase. This H2O2 powered sensor was extended to fabricate a virus sensor based on the formation of antibody-virus complexes within the sensor’s membrane nanochannels for direct detection of unlabelled virus particles. This fuel cell virus sensor offered an impressive short response time of ~5 min toward the specific virus target, at low concentration values of 3 to 45 pfu mL-1. As low as 0.04 pfu mL-1 of detection limit was achieved, which was comparable to state-of-the-art PCR based methods. To simplify the sensing design, we fabricated an integrated PB-nt membrane filled with Nafion®perfluorinated resin as a standalone fuel cell based virus sensor, which offered promising potential to develop a sustainable, low cost and rapid low power virus detection tool. Inspired from the integrate membrane probe, we demonstrated a hand-held H2O2 fuel cell sensor based on Prussian blue nanotubes membrane. This H2O2 fuel cell sensor was constructed using four standalone nafion-filled PB-nt membranes connected in parallel, which employed the PB-nt membrane as both electrodes and fuel reservoir. An open-circuit potential (OCP) of 0.54 V with a maximum power density of 0.7 mW cm-2 has been achieved at a low concentration of 10 mM H2O2. The analytical performance of the fuel cell sensor was monitored using a micro-current meter to record the responding signal towards varying H2O2 concentrations. An excellent linear relationship has been established between the responding current signal and low concentrations of H2O2.