Melanin is the photoprotecting biomaterial in animal organisms, and is also a promising smart biomaterial due to a manifold of properties including a broad absorption spectrum, radiationless deactivation of electronic excitation, or redox agility. Eumelanin, the main variant, is composed of oligomers of 5,6-dihydroxyindole (DHI) and 5,6-dihydroxyindole carboxylic acid (DHICA). However, a full understanding of its biological function and exploitation of its properties in a material science context have note yet been achieved because of its atomic-level structure is unknown.<br/>In this talk we will present our work aiming at elucidating the structure and function of eumelanin components, including characterization of a comprehensive virtual library of DHI dimers, study of the photophysics of elemental components, and an outlook on the use of machine learning in a melanin context.

Understanding melanin with theory and computations

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ACS Fall 2022

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