| Summary: | Prodigiosin, a natural pigment produced as a secondary metabolite by the non-photosynthetic bacterium Serratia
marcescens, was tested as a sensitizer in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). The strain S. marcescens 11E, which was
isolated from a natural spring located in the northeastern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, was cultivated on peanut
oil broth 1% v/v, a culture medium which is known to enhance the production of prodigiosin. The resulting
pigment was extracted with chloroform and identified as prodigiosin based on the spectroscopic and structural
characteristics obtained by UV–Vis spectrophotometry along with FTIR and 1H NMR spectroscopies. The initial
absorbance decomposition test performed on the bacterial pigment demonstrated that prodigiosin exhibited high
photostability after five days, while the photovoltaic performance test of the sensitized DSSC, resulted in an open
voltage circuit of 560 mV, a current density of 0.096 mA/cm2, and efficiency of 0.032%. Structurally, the DSSC
consisted of a titanium dioxide (TiO2) photoanode sensitized with the pigment by direct adsorption, an electrolyte
containing a redox pair I
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