Manuel Reali, PhD student
Anthony Camus, MSc student
Prof. Clara Santato Research Group (Polytechnique Montréal)
Over the last few years, the terrific technological advancements in the field of electronics paralleled by higher purchasing power, large scale urbanization and industrialization, shorter lifetime and replacing cycles, lead to the generation of unbearable amounts of Waste Electrical and Electronics Equipment (E-Waste). Only in 2019, 53.6 Mt of E-Waste were produced worldwide and such amount is expected to growth up to 74.7 Mt by 2030. E-Waste contains toxic elements that if buried in landfill or inhaled, can seriously put in danger the health of the current and future generations.
A paradigm shift from linear to circular economy, focusing on eco-design, durability, refurbishment and recycling is needed. A viable route to reduce the carbon footprint of electronics is the development of Sustainable Green Organic Electronics, using ubiquitous biosourced, biocompatible, compostable and possibly biodegradable materials. Among the biosourced matarials available in nature, eumelanin is one of the most fascinating. The synergy between electronic conjugation and hydration dependent electrical response, make eumelanin a mixed protonic-electronic conductor. Furthermore, eumelanin is a quinone-based redox active biopigment, which makes it an ideal candidate for energy storage applications. However, the poor solubility of eumelanin in the majority of organic solvents is a real setback and often limiting its range of applications. Herein, we show an efficient method to extract and purify eumelanin powders from the raw ink of Sepia Officinalis cuttlefish. Such an extraction provides a fine black powder that is then used to get a purified Sepia ink. Our ink-formulation leads to a reproducible, effective printing of Sepia melanin on flexible substrates and carbon paper. Work is in progress to study structure-property relationships of our electrodes for the design and the development of eumelanin-ink based electrodes for light-assisted supercapacitors.
