Can kamala fruit harness the power of the sun?

This research team at Central University of Jharkhand has used the dye extract of the kamala fruit to create a low-cost and non-toxic sensitiser for dye-sensitised solar cells.

It might sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but leveraging fruit dye extracts for use in solar cells is possible in the real world. For the past few years, natural extracts from produce such as jamun, pomegranate, spinach, beetroot, hibiscus, green algae and black carrot have been utilised as solar cell dye and found favour for both scalable and sustainable benefits. (Subscribe to our Today's Cache newsletter for a quick snapshot of top 5 tech stories. Click to subscribe for free.) Popularly known as senduri, rohini or rori among Jharkhand tribal communities, the red kamala tree is a semi-evergreen woody spurge plant that bears fruit only in spring. When Prof. Basudev Pradhan, Assistant Professor at Central University of Jharkhand’s (CUJ) Department of Energy Engineering, looked at the dozens of kamala (Mallotus phillipensis) trees across the campus, he decided to investigate the efficacy of this fruit’s extract in creating a non-toxic sensitiser for Dye-Sensitised Solar Cells (DSSCs). And he was proven right.