Surface oxygen-rich titanium as anode for high performance microbial fuel cell

•Surface oxygen-rich titanium prepared by heat treatment is evaluated as anode of MFC.•Surface oxygen enhances biocompatibility of titanium.•The titanium anode exhibits enhanced electrocatalytic activity toward electron transfer.•MFC delivers improved power output compared with the untreated titanium. We report a novel anode, surface oxygen-rich titanium, for high performance microbial fuel cell. Differently from conventional anodes that are usually composed of electrocatalysts composites and thus exhibit poor dimensional stability, our titanium anode is stable dimensionally and easily available by a simple heat treatment. The surface properties of the resulting anode are characterized with SEM, XPS and XRD, and its electrochemical performances are evaluated in Escherichia coli-based microbial fuel cell. It is found that after heat treatment, titanium contains more surface oxygen atoms and thus delivers higher power output as anode of the microbial fuel cell. Compared with pristine titanium, surface oxygen-rich titanium exhibits better biocompatibility and electrocatalytic activity for the electron transfer between bacteria and anode.