• Dr. Vikram Singh, former research scholar in the Department of Chemistry, IIT Madras won the BIRAC Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (GYTI) Award 2017 for his work on producing white light emission using natural extracts.
• While polyphenols and anthocyanins present in red pomegranate emit at blue and orange-red regions of the wavelength respectively, curcumin from turmeric emit at the green region of the wavelength.
• White light emission is produced when red, blue and green mix together.
• This is probably the first time white light emission has been generated using low-cost, edible natural dyes.
• Though this natural mixture of dyes can be used in a wide variety of applications such as tunable laser, LEDs, white light display, much work needs to be done in terms of photostability and chemical stability before it becomes ready for translation.
• Biosystems have an inherent tendency to breakdown and so this has to be addressed.

Source:TH