Next-Generation 3D Printed Microfluidic Membraneless Enzymatic Biofuel Cell: Cost-Effective and Rapid Approach

3D printing offers a novel, time-efficient, and multi-material fabrication platform for numerous applications owing to its potential to rapidly manufacture low-cost and 3D printed (3DP) structures. In this paper, polylactic acid (PLA) and conductive composite graphene/PLA filaments were used to fabricate 3DP microchannels and electrodes intended for enzymatic biofuel cells (EBFCs) using a commercial bench-top 3D printer. This 3D printing technology delivers a simplistic, cost-effective, and quick fabrication process, which eliminates the requirement of any further amendment and post-processing. With this technology, we demonstrate structurally simple, miniature 3DP microfluidic membraneless EBFCs (3DP-MM-EBFCs), served with glucose and oxygen with the utilization of redox mediators generating continuous power. The cell performance was evaluated at different flow rates, obtaining open circuit potential (OCP) 0.425 V and maximum peak power density (PD) 4.15 μW/cm
²
at a current density (CD) of 13.36 μA/cm
²
. The advancement in 3DP electrode surface characteristic and the dimethylformamide (DMF) treatment is carried onto the electrode surface followed by the immobilization of the enzymes individually. The 3DP fabrication technology demonstrated the feasibility of simple and advanced microfabrication techniques to build a well-organized plug-and-play and rapidly analyzed device to power several portable low-power devices.