Butterfly Wings Could Inspire New Hue-Changing Materials
WASHINGTON - Butterfly wings can do remarkable things with light, and humans are still trying to learn from them. Physicists have now uncovered how subtle differences in the tiny crystals of butterfly wings create stunningly varied patterns of color even among closely related species. The discovery, reported in the Optical Society’s (OSA) open-access journal Optical Materials Express, could lead to new coatings for manufactured materials that could change color by design, if researchers can figure out how to replicate the wings’ light-manipulating properties.
“It was very exciting to see how nature can create a nanostructure that’s not easy to replicate by humans,” says Kok Wai Cheah, a physicist at Hong Kong Baptist University. He and his colleagues are the first to investigate the color-creating mechanisms in multiple butterfly species within a single genus.