Demonstrating Electron Transfer and Nanotechnology: A Natural Dye-Sensitized Nanocrystalline Energy Converter

A unique solar cell fabrication procedure has been developed using natural anthocyanin dyes extracted from berries. It can be reproduced with a minimum amount of resources in order to provide an interdisciplinary approach for lower-division undergraduate students learning the basic principles of biological extraction, physical chemistry, and spectroscopy as well as environmental science and electron transfer. Electron transfer is the basis of the energetics that drives the processes of life on Earth, occurring in both the mitochondrial membranes of living cells and in the thylakoid membranes of photosynthetic cells of green plants and algae (1). Although we depend on the petroleum and agricultural products of this electron and energy transfer, one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century is that we have yet to create devices that can be used to tap directly into the ultimate source of this energy on an economic scale. An experimental lab procedure was therefore created in order to illustrate the connections between natural and man-made solar conversion within a three-hour lab period.