Bioenergy Harvesting from Human Sweat Using a Photocatalytic Polypyrrole/MoS2 Composite Electrode

Abstract

As the demand for personal wearable devices escalates, lithium waste has become an environmental issue, impulsing the necessity to uncover potential renewable energy sources. In that regard, the study proposed an electropolymerized pyrrole that could conceivably act as the conductive support, empowering the electrochemical reaction to generate electricity within the proposed biofuel-powered system, together with MoS2 with its electronic properties and high photogenerated electron density, synthesizing a composite-based electrode to convert human sweat ions: potassium, sodium, calcium, and chloride, etc. to be bioenergy. From the study, it was found that by using 0.084 M of pyrrole with a 3600-s chronoamperometry, the current generated by the PPy/MoS2 composite was optimum as evaluated with visible light as well as having a minimum impedance compared to the others. Through the samples, the electropolymerization yielded proof of the composite existence by demonstrationing MoS2 as a large rigid structure, with PPy anchored towards it along with the peak combination between the consituent atoms in FTIR, XRD, and Raman as well as XPS to locate signals of the element orbitals along with the atomic percentage of the composite and its constituent separately. The too-low current made the LED highly dim to no light during the final demonstration; hence, more studies regarding the factor of incident light angle towards the catalyst were needed.