Natural dyes composed by anthocyanins extracted from natural Caribbean species S. cumini, were employed to evaluate their effects on the photocatalytic properties of TiO₂ thin films. The qualitative and quantitative analyses of the anthocyanins were carried out using high-performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detection (HPLC-DAD). From the chemical characterization of the S. cumini extract three main anthocyanins were identified and the most abundant compound was delphinidin-3,5-diglucoside (44%). The total anthocyanin content expresses as delphinidin chloride (TAEDC) per mL of the extract was equal to 124 ± 5 μg TAEDC/mL. After the identification, a sensitization process was performed and verified by infrared spectroscopy (IR) and absorption diffuse reflectance. Afterwards, the Methylene Blue photodegradation process was studied under visible light irradiation on the S. cumini-sensitized TiO₂ material (TiO₂/S. cumini). The results indicated that the photocatalytic activity of the sensitized material TiO₂/S. cumini was ∼3 times greater than unmodified TiO₂ thin films, which let us to propose that the extract from Caribbean Colombian S. cumini could have a great potential as source of photosensitizers for photocatalytic applications. Finally, the electronic structure of each anthocyanin found in the extract (delphinidin-3,5-diglucoside, malvidin-3-5-diglucoside and petunidin-3-5-diglucoside) and their interaction with a TiO₂ model was studied by means of the density functional theory (DFT).

用从加勒比天然种S.cumini提取的花色素苷组成的天然染料，评估了它们对TiO ₂薄膜的光催化性能的影响。使用高效液相色谱和光电二极管阵列检测（HPLC-DAD）对花色苷进行定性和定量分析。从S. cumini的化学表征提取物中鉴定出三种主要花色苷，其中最丰富的化合物是飞燕草3,5-二葡萄糖苷（44％）。花青素的总含量表示为每毫升提取物中的氯化翠雀碱（TAEDC）等于124±5μgTAEDC / mL。鉴定后，进行了敏化过程，并通过红外光谱（IR）和吸收扩散反射率进行了验证。然后，在可见光下对枯草杆菌敏感的TiO ₂材料（TiO ₂ / S. cumini）研究了亚甲基蓝的光降解过程。结果表明，感光材料TiO ₂ / S. cumini的光催化活性是未改性TiO的约3倍。₂薄膜，这使我们建议加勒比海哥伦比亚S. cumini提取物具有巨大潜力，可作为光敏剂用于光催化应用。最后，通过萃取法研究了提取物中发现的每种花色苷（delphinidin-3,5-diglucoside，malvidin-3-5-diglucoside和petunidin-3-5-diglucoside）的电子结构及其与TiO ₂模型的相互作用。密度泛函理论（DFT）。