Researchers discover melanin could make for great batteries

Melanin is best known as the pigment that dictates our skin tones, but it is found just about everywhere—in our brains, in our hair. It is even found in cuttlefish. But as abundant as melanin is, its exact macromolecular chemical structure is surprisingly not well understood.

Though researchers have extensively studied the chemical structure of individual melanin molecules for more than 70 years, relatively little is known about the molecular building blocks that form complex melanin pigments. But a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon has discovered that the chemical structure of melanin on a macromolecular scale exhibits, amongst other shapes, a four-membered ring—in other words, a chemical structure that may be conducive to creating certain kinds of batteries based on natural melanin pigments (Advanced Materials, "Evidence of Porphyrin-Like Structures in Natural Melanin Pigments Using Electrochemical Fingerprinting").