Bioelectrocatalysis at carbon nanotubes

Abstract

This paper summarizes several examples of enzyme immobilization and bioelectrocatalysis at carbon nanotubes (CNTs). CNTs offer substantial improvements on the overall performance of amperometric enzyme electrodes mainly due to their unique structural, mechanical and electronic properties such as metallic, semi-conducting and superconducting electron transport. Unfortunately, their water insolubility restrains the kick-off in some particular fields. However, the chemical functionalization of CNTs, non-covalent and covalent, attracted a remarkable interest over the past several decades boosting the development of electrochemical biosensors and enzymatic fuel cells (EFCs) based on two different types of communications: mediated electron transfer (MET)-type, where the use of redox mediators, small electroactive molecules (freely diffusing or bound to side chains of flexible redox polymers), which are able to shuttle the electrons between the enzyme active site and the electrode (second electron transfer generation system); direct electron transfer (DET)-type between the redox group of the enzyme and the electrode surface (third electron transfer generation system).

Keywords: Bioelectrocatalysis; CNTs grafting; Carbon nanotubes (CNTs); Covalent immobilization; Direct electron transfer (DET); Gold-MWCNTs composite; Homogeneous CNTs dispersion; Mediated electron transfer (MET); Non-covalent immobilization; Redox enzymes.