Abstract:Paederia foetida is an important perennial climbing medicinal herb native to eastern Asia. It is used as a remedy for diarrhea, dysentery, rheumatism and fever in Asia. Malay called this plant 'akar sekentut' and it is often eaten raw or steamed by local people rather than using it as traditional medicine. This preliminary study aims to determine the amount of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in local Paederia foetida leaves. The dried leaves were soaked in ethanol for one day at room temperature before being evaporated to obtain the extract. Then, high performance liquid chromatography analysis has been used to analyze the samples. Results obtained show amount of vitamin C in mature leaves is higher than young leaves with 66 ppm and 64 ppm respectively. This showed that, paederia foetida leaves consist considerable high amount of vitamin C and more study should be done on this local species to investigate chemical active compounds with biological function potential.

The efficiency improvement of Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC), the fabrication of DSSC by using metal-free organic natural dyes with a different type of solvents for the extraction of dye sensitizer was investigated. The metal-free organic Dye which comes from anthocyanin and chlorophyll dyes were dissolved by using different solvents, which are ethanol, methanol and mixture of ethanol and methanol. Anthocyanin dye was extracted from the petals of Hibiscus Sabdariffa (Roselle), and chlorophyll dye was extracted from the epidermal leaves of Pandannus amaryllifolius (Pandan). The purpose of using different solvents from alcohol-based was to determine which solvents that produce the highest effect in term of efficiency for DSSC. To confirm which solvents that produce the highest efficiency to the DSSC, the photovoltaic measurement was conducted, and the data was collected. From the photovoltaic analysis, the J-V characteristics under illumination are recorded. The sample that used anthocyanin dye extracted from Roselle flower diluted with methanol solvent gave the highest efficiency which is 0.0005% with the following parameters – Voc = 0.419 V, Jsc = 0.0057 mA/cm2 and FF = 0.24. Meanwhile, the sample that used chlorophyll dye extracted from Pandan leaves diluted with a mix of ethanol and methanol solvents gave the highest efficiency which is 0.00014% with the following parameters - Voc = 0.347 V, Jsc = 0.0016 mA/cm2 and FF = 0.25.

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Paederia foetida is an important perennial climbing medicinal herb native to eastern Asia. It is used as a remedy for diarrhea, dysentery, rheumatism and fever in Asia because the leaves are rich in carotene and vitamin C. Malay called this plant 'akar sekentut'and it is often eaten raw or steamed by local people rather than using it as traditional medicine. This preliminary study aims to determine the amount of vitamin c (ascorbic acid) and antioxidant (phenol) in local Paederia foetida. Parts used are the plant leaves, young leaves and mature leaves. The dried leaves were soaked in ethanol for 1 day at room temperature before being evaporated to obtain the extract. Then, high performance liquid chromatography analysis has been used to analyze the samples. Results obtained show amount of vitamin C in mature leaves is higher than young leaves with 66 ppm and 64 ppm respectively but amount of antioxidant (phenol) are not detected. This shows that, paederia foetida consist considerable high amount of vitamin C and more study should be done on this local species to investigate chemical active compounds with biological function potential.