Review of Development in Heavy Metals Monitoring with Microbial Fuel Cell-based Toxicity Biosensor

Microbial fuel cell (MFC) based toxicity biosensors have shown wide application prospects in environmental monitoring due to the superiority of low cost, real-time, simple operation and online automatic detection. It was summarized that the research status of MFC-based toxicity biosensors for detecting and warning of heavy metal ions in recent ten years. Main indicators of the functions of biosensors were introduced based on the principle of the MFC-based toxicity biosensors. The performance of the MFC detecting heavy metals was analyzed from five aspects including its configuration, membrane type, electrode material, control mode and inoculated microorganism. Furthermore, the following potential future research directions of MFC-based toxicity biosensors were prospected:(1) To screen the electricigens with good specificity, high sensitivity and fast recovery for the detection of a specific heavy metal ion; (2) To achieve the miniaturization and integration of biosensors based on the new material technology; (3) To realize the remote online real-time monitoring and intelligent of MFC-based toxicity biosensors by the combination with 5th-generation technology.