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Host: Michael Brenner
Dr. Silvia Vignolini
Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK
Nature’s most vivid colours are produced when light repeatedly scatters against periodically organized interfaces within nanostructured materials. This brilliant iridescent colouration is frequently used in many insect and animals but also in different species of plants.
One of the most striking example is the colour of Pollia fruits [1] is the results of chiral multilayered structures composed of cellulose micro-fibrils, which from a layered structures. In each component layer, cellulose micro-fibrils lie parallel to one another, with successive layers offset from each other at a small angle, so that the direction of the parallel-aligned micro-fibrils changes consistently, rotating from one layer to another and producing an intense colour-selective reflection.
Biomimetic with cellulose-based architectures enables us to fabricate novel photonic structures using low cost materials in ambient conditions [2-4]. Importantly, it also allows us to understand the biological processes at work during the growth of these structures in plants.
In this work the route for the fabrication of cellulose-base architecture will be presented and the optical properties of cellulose artificial structures will be analyzed and compared with natural ones.