Ethylene diamine grafting on the carbon surface was conducted using the electrochemical reduction. As the potential sweeps to negative direction during the first cycle, the oxidation of amino group in ethylene diamine is reduced on pyrolyzed carbon surface at potentials between -0.8 V and -1.4 V, leading to a clear irreversible anodic peak. It also shows that any peaks by oxidation and reduction do not exist after first reduction sweep even though we notice that the anodic current of electrode is decreased. This result indicates that the ethylene diamine was grafted on the surface of pyrolyzed carbon by applying potential and pyrolyzed surface is successfully functionalized by the electrochemical method.

We have introduced three types of functionalization on carbon surface in this session. In the future work, we will immobilize different biomolecules based on these functionalization methods for EBFCs device. Work on building a prototype EBFC consisting of glucose oxidase immobilized anode and a laccase immobilized cathode using C-MEMS based interdigitated electrode arrays is underway.