Brilliant whiteness in shrimp from ultra-thin layers of birefringent nanospheres.

Biophotonics Biophysics Green photonics Optical materials Photonic crystals

Journal

Nature photonics
ISSN: 1749-4885
Titre abrégé: Nat Photonics
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101283276

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
2023
Historique:
received: 20 10 2022
accepted: 24 02 2023
medline: 8 6 2023
pubmed: 8 6 2023
entrez: 8 6 2023
Statut: ppublish

Résumé

A fundamental question regarding light scattering is how whiteness, generated from multiple scattering, can be obtained from thin layers of materials. This challenge arises from the phenomenon of optical crowding, whereby, for scatterers packed with filling fractions higher than ~30%, reflectance is drastically reduced due to near-field coupling between the scatterers. Here we show that the extreme birefringence of isoxanthopterin nanospheres overcomes optical crowding effects, enabling multiple scattering and brilliant whiteness from ultra-thin chromatophore cells in shrimp. Strikingly, numerical simulations reveal that birefringence, originating from the spherulitic arrangement of isoxanthopterin molecules, enables intense broadband scattering almost up to the maximal packing for random spheres. This reduces the thickness of material required to produce brilliant whiteness, resulting in a photonic system that is more efficient than other biogenic or biomimetic white materials which operate in the lower refractive index medium of air. These results highlight the importance of birefringence as a structural variable to enhance the performance of such materials and could contribute to the design of biologically inspired replacements for artificial scatterers like titanium dioxide.

Identifiants

pubmed: 37287680
doi: 10.1038/s41566-023-01182-4
pii: 1182
pmc: PMC10241642
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Pagination

485-493

Informations de copyright

© The Author(s) 2023.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests.

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Auteurs

Tali Lemcoff (T)

Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.

Lotem Alus (L)

Department of Molecular Chemistry and Materials Science, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Department of Chemical and Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.

Johannes S Haataja (JS)

Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo, Finland.

Avital Wagner (A)

Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.

Gan Zhang (G)

Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Present Address: College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.

Mariela J Pavan (MJ)

Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.

Venkata Jayasurya Yallapragada (VJ)

Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh India.

Silvia Vignolini (S)

Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

Dan Oron (D)

Department of Molecular Chemistry and Materials Science, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.

Lukas Schertel (L)

Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Department of Physics, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.

Benjamin A Palmer (BA)

Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.

Classifications MeSH