Development and characterisation of self-assembled graphene hydrogel-based anodes for bioelectrochemical systems

LESCANO, MARIELA I.; GASNIER, AURÉLIEN ; PEDANO, MARIA LAURA; SICA, MAURICIO P.; PASQUEVICH, DANIEL; PRADOS, MARÍA BELÉN

RSC Advances

Royal Society of Chemistry

Año: 2018 vol. 8 p. 26755 - 26763

In this work, we report a simple and scalable method to produce high efficiency 3D graphenebased electrodes (GH) for bioelectrochemical systems. GH were obtained by self-assembly of graphene oxide, through slow reduction with ascorbic acid over conductive mesh-works (carbon cloth and stainless-steel). The GH structure and composition were characterised by electron microscopy (SEM) and spectroscopy (FTIR and Raman), whereas the electrodes performance was tested by chronoamperometry and cyclic voltammetry in a microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) inoculated with a pure culture of G. sulfurreducens. The hydrogel had a broad pore size distribution (> 1 µm), which allowed bacterial colonisation within the framework. The macro-porous structure and chemical properties of the hydrogel rendered a higher bacterial loading capacity and substrate oxidation rate than other carbonaceous materials, including different reported graphene electrodes,which significantly increased MEC performance.