Self-powered electrochemical sensing platform based on zinc-air battery via synergy of the light filtering effect and photoassisted oxygen reduction reaction

Self-powered electrochemical sensor has received widespread attention due to it does not require an external power supply. In this study, a self-powered electrochemical sensor based on visible light assisted zinc-air battery (SPES-ZAB) was used as a feasible platform to identify changes in light intensity, which was developed a concealed sensing strategy to expand the application range of UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy. Typically, the core of the zinc air battery is an oxygen reduction catalyst, of which the realization of the oxygen reduction reaction through photo-assisted catalyst is one of the emerging strategies. In this self-powered system, zinc as anode and the polyterthiophene as photocathode were used to construct zinc-air battery and realize the output voltage of the SPES-ZAB through the regulation of light intensity. In addition, we used rhodamine B, potassium permanganate and dopamine self-oxidation solution as model analyte to study the light filtering effect and the sensing performance of SPES-ZAB. Through the filtering effect of the solution on the light intensity, the photocathode oxygen reduction process can be adjusted to achieve the ability of the SPES-ZAB to detect the target. Compared to the results of UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy, the SPES-ZAB exhibits good linear relationship range and excellent universality in the detection of high-concentration colored solutions. This is the first time the use of SPES-ZAB as sensing platform to detect the target in homogeneous system, which will expand the application range of self-powered sensors.