Colour with a Twist: Engineering Optical Appearance with Chiral Noematic Architectures

The most brilliant colours in nature are obtained by structuring transparent materials on the scale of the wavelength of visible light. By controlling/designing the dimensions of such nanostructures, it is possible to achieve extremely intense colourations over the entire visible spectrum without using pigments or colorants. Colour obtained through structure, namely structural colour, is widespread in the animal and plant kingdom [1]. Such natural photonic nanostructures are generally synthesised in ambient conditions using a limited range of biopolymers.
In this seminar, I will review our recent advances to fabricate bio-mimetic photonic structures with cellulose and chitin and I will give examples of how to fabricate novel photonic materials based on chiral noematic architectures using low cost polymers in
ambient conditions [2-7].

References:
[1] Kinoshita, S. et al. (2008). Physics of structural colors. Rep. Prog. Phys. 71(7), 076401.
[2] Narkevicius A, et al. (2019). Controlling the Self-Assembly Behavior of Aqueous Chitin
Nanocrystal Suspensions, Biomacromolecules 20, 2830
[3] Chan C. L. et. al. (2019) Visual Appearance of Chiral Nematic Cellulose-Based
Photonic Films: Angular and Polarization Independent Color Response with a Twist, Adv
Mater 31, 1905151
[4] Frka-Petesic et al. (2019) Angular optical response of cellulose nanocrystal films
explained by the distortion of the arrested suspension upon drying. Physical Review
Materials 3, 045601
[5] Parker R. et al. (2018) The Self-Assembly of Cellulose Nanocrystals: Hierarchical
Design of Visual Appearance. Adv Mat 30, 1704477
[6] Parker R. et al. (2016). Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Cellulose Nanocrystals in a
Confined Geometry. ACS Nano, 10 (9), 8443–8449
[7] Liang H-L. et al. (2018). Roll-to-roll fabrication of touch-responsive cellulose photonic
laminates, Nat Com 9, 4632