Rice University scientist developing plant dye-based battery to charge cellphones

New York: Scientists, including Indian American researcher Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, are developing an eco-friendly, lithium-ion battery from an ancient natural red plant dye that can power your cellphone.

The dye the researchers are investigating for use in batteries comes from the roots of a climbing herb known as the madder plant.

Civilizations in Asia and the Middle East first boiled madder roots more than 3,500 years ago to extract purpurin, a nontoxic dye they used to color fabrics vivid oranges, reds and pinks, TechNewsDaily reported.

"This is a paradigm shift. For the last 3,000 years, we’ve used purpurin as a dye material—we never thought this could be used in energy storage," said researcher George John, an organic chemist at the City College of New York.

Most lithium-ion batteries rely on cobalt as a key ingredient in the electrodes that electric current flows through. "Thirty percent of globally produced cobalt is fed into battery technology," said Reddy, a materials scientist at Rice University.

However, mining cobalt is expensive, and supplies are finite. Fabricating and recycling lithium-ion batteries made with cobalt also demands high temperatures and lots of energy. After investigating a number of molecules from nature, the researchers found that purpurin and its relatives seem ideal as electrode materials.

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.