Structural Diversity of Arthropod Biophotonic Nanostructures Spans Amphiphilic Phase-Space

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• 作者：Vinodkumar Saranathan ; Ainsley E. Seago ; Alec Sandy ; Suresh Narayanan ; Simon G. J. Mochrie ; Eric R. Dufresne ; Hui Cao ; Chinedum O. Osuji ; Richard O. Prum
• 刊名：Nano Letters
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：June 10, 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：15
• 期：6
• 页码：3735-3742
• 全文大小：489K
• ISSN：1530-6992

文摘

Many organisms, especially arthropods, produce vivid interference colors using diverse mesoscopic (100鈥?50 nm) integumentary biophotonic nanostructures that are increasingly being investigated for technological applications. Despite a century of interest, precise structural knowledge of many biophotonic nanostructures and the mechanisms controlling their development remain tentative, when such knowledge can open novel biomimetic routes to facilely self-assemble tunable, multifunctional materials. Here, we use synchrotron small-angle X-ray scattering and electron microscopy to characterize the photonic nanostructure of 140 integumentary scales and setae from 鈭?27 species of terrestrial arthropods in 85 genera from 5 orders. We report a rich nanostructural diversity, including triply periodic bicontinuous networks, close-packed spheres, inverse columnar, perforated lamellar, and disordered spongelike morphologies, commonly observed as stable phases of amphiphilic surfactants, block copolymer, and lyotropic lipid鈥搘ater systems. Diverse arthropod lineages appear to have independently evolved to utilize the self-assembly of infolding lipid-bilayer membranes to develop biophotonic nanostructures that span the phase-space of amphiphilic morphologies, but at optical length scales.