Melanin’s vibrational behaviour as a function of temperature and hydration to give insight to its heat capacity and conductivity behaviour

Electroceuticals is the attempt to “ speak the electrical language of the nerves to achieve higher treatment effect”. Thus, the search is on to develop devices to enhance personalised healthcare. Part of creating such devices is selecting materials that can interface between biology and computers. One such material is the skin pigment melanin since it is bio-compatible and sustains electrical current. Recently we obtained electrical and heat capacity measurements (as a function of hydration and temperature) on melanin that showed unusual low temperature behaviour. The implications are that there are physical structural differences between hydrated and dry melanin, which changes its electrical conduction. We wish to use inelastic neutron scattering to probe the structure of hydrated melanins via its vibrational spectra and correlate it to our previous measurements.