Natural Dye Sensitizer for Grӓtzel Cells: Sepia Melanin

Agnes Mbonyiryivuze^{1, 2,} , Isaiah Omollo^{1, 3}, Balla Diop Ngom^{1, 4}, Bonex Mwakikunga^{1, 5}, Simon Mokhotjwa Dhlamini^{1, 3}, Eugene Park^{1, 6} and Malik Maaza^{1, 2}

¹UNESCO-UNISA Africa Chair in Nanosciences/Nanotechnology, College of Graduate Studies, University of South Africa, Pretoria-South Africa

²Nanosciences African Network (NANOAFNET), iThemba LABS-National Research Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa

³Dept. of Physics, Florida Research Centre, University of South Africa, Florida-South Africa

⁴Laboratoire de Photonique et de nanofablication, Groupe de Physique du Solide et des Science matériaux (GPSSM), Faculté de Science et Techniques, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar(UCAD), Dakar, Sénégal

⁵CSIR- National Centre for Nano-Structured Materials, Pretoria, South Africa

⁶Nanosciences African Network (NANOAFNET), iThemba LABS-National Research Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa;Materials Sci. & Eng. Dept., Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science & Technology, Arusha-Tanzania

Cite this paper:
Agnes Mbonyiryivuze, Isaiah Omollo, Balla Diop Ngom, Bonex Mwakikunga, Simon Mokhotjwa Dhlamini, Eugene Park and Malik Maaza. Natural Dye Sensitizer for Grӓtzel Cells: Sepia Melanin. Physics and Materials Chemistry. 2015; 3(1):1-6. doi: 10.12691/pmc-3-1-1

Abstract

The efficiency of Grätzel cell can be further improved by the anchoring groups, such as COOH to be adsorbed onto the TiO₂ surface with a large electronic coupling. Some of the most efficient sensitizers are synthetic dyes including transition metal coordination compounds such as Ruthenium polypyridyl complexes because of their highly efficient metal-to-ligand charge transfer, suitable ground and excited state energy levels with respect to titanium dioxide conduction band energy. They also have intense and wide range absorption in whole visible range. Even if they present such attractive features, their synthesis process is costly and complicated and they are not environment friendly because they contain heavy rare metals which are undesirable from the point of view of environmental conservation aspects. Natural dye can be the best alternative as they have acceptable efficiency in comparison to that one of transition coordination compounds and their extraction can be done by simple procedures from flowers, leaves, fruits, animals and other natural products. Melanin as the major component Sepia Officinalis ink pigment cause strong interactions with the hydroxyl groups of a TiO₂. Melanin possesses a broad band absorbance in UV and visible range up to infrared. It also possesses the COOH and OH groups which would be free to bind to the surface of TiO₂. Moreover, melanin polymer has interesting properties such as a considerable spectral absorbance width due to the high degree of conjugation of the molecule. This paper reports results from X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis as well as Raman spectroscopy of sepia melanin for Grätzel cell application.

Keywords:
Grätzel cell dye sensitizer Sepia melanin Sepia Officinalis natural dye

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