txchnologist: A Marine Critter that Shines Like a Gem Could Make Better Coatings and Displays This t
txchnologist: A Marine Critter that Shines Like a Gem Could Make Better Coatings and Displays This tiny marine animal called a sea sapphire shimmers and glows brilliantly without a single drop of drop of pigment. Instead, the crustacean uses crystals of guanine, the same organic molecule that makes up one of the nucleotides in DNA and RNA. Chemist Lia Addadi and her colleagues in Israel found that hexagonal guanine crystals are responsible for reflecting light at certain angles. These same crystals, obtained from fish scales, have been used for centuries to create pearly iridescence in cosmetics, shampoos and paints. “One of the most striking examples of such photonic structures are the male sapphirinid copepods, small marine crustaceans that produce a variety of different colors, but only when the incident light is at specific angles to the animal’s dorsal surface,” the authors write in a study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. “Thus, the copepods ‘flash’ light of a specific color, but as they move they become transparent and suddenly seem to almost completely disappear.” Learn more and see images below. Keep reading -- source link
#materials science#science#optics#photonic crystals