Artificial blood vessel biofuel cell for self-powered blood glucose monitoring.

The rapid developments in wearable and implantable devices have attracted great attention due to potential applications in health monitoring, disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment. However, limited capacity and relatively large volume of conventional batteries limit the service life and overall size of most wearable or implantable devices. Biofuel cell (BFC) is a kind of bio-cell based on biological enzymes. The enzyme as a catalyst can interconvert renewable and sustainable energy into each other more rapidly, such as the biochemical energy in glucose and ethanol into electrical energy. In this work, artificial blood vessel and fuel cell based on polyaniline/thermoplastic polyurethane (PANI/TPU) nanofiber membranes were prepared by electrospinning and followed in situ polymerization. The electrospun membrane has good flexibility and mechanical properties, and can be stretched up to 200%. The advantages of good hydrophilicity, biocompatibility and high porosity make it possible to efficiently load enzyme materials. The prepared biofuel cell can stably output a voltage of 50 mV in simulated blood, and the output electrical signal changes significantly with the change of glucose concentration, which may be used in implantable devices or blood glucose monitoring.