Progress on anodic modification materials and future development directions in microbial fuel cells

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs), as a promising sustainable bioelectrochemical energy technology for simultaneous wastewater recycling and treatments while generating bioelectricity, have attracted remarkable attention worldwide in the recent decades. Anodic modification materials are remarkably related to the active microbes, electrodes materials and effectual extracellular electron transfer (EET) mechanisms between bacteria and anode, which are crucial for the improvement of EET efficiency, power density, energy conversion efficiency and operational durability in MFCs. This paper summarizes and reviews the currently application of various anodic modification materials in MFCs, simultaneously discusses and looks toward the future development directions of MFCs. •Extracellular electron transfer mechanisms of active bacteria are described.•Various anode substrate materials are presented.•Researches of anodic modification materials are exhibited.•Future development directions of MFCs are described.