The search for lead product with beneficial pharmacological properties has become a great challenge and costly. Extraction and synthetic modification of bioactive compounds from natural resources has gained great attention and is cost effective. In this study, kojic acid was produced from fungal fermentation, using sago waste as substrate, and chemically incorporated with chalcones and azobenzene to form a series of kojic ester derivatives and evaluated for antibacterial activities. Kojic ester bearing halogenated chalcone demonstrated active inhibition against Staphylococcus aureus compared to that of standard ampicillin. The inhibition increased as the electronegativity of halogens decreased, while incorporation of azobenzene derivatives on kojic acid backbone demonstrated fair antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli with minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 190–330 ppm. The presence of C=C and N=N reactive moieties in both chalcone and azo molecules contributed to the potential biological activities of the kojic acid ester.
Sensitization of heavy metal free organic dyes onto TiO 2 thin films has gained much attention in dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). A series of new kojic acid based organic dyes KA -were synthesized via nucleophilic substitution of azobenzene bearing different vinyl chains A -with kojyl chloride . Azo dyes KA -were characterized for photophysical properties employing absorption spectrometry and photovoltaic characteristic in TiO 2 thin film. The presence of vinyl chain in A -improved the photovoltaic performance from 0.20 to 0.60%. The introduction of kojic acid obtained from sago waste further increases the efficiency to 0.82-1.54%. Based on photovoltaic performance, KA achieved the highest solar to electrical energy conversion efficiency ( = 1.54%) in the series.
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