A detailed study of the interaction between fluorescence and nanostructure in naturally evolved photonic systems

生物世界生产和使用色彩已有数亿年的历史。通过各种形式的进化选择压力，大自然发展了许多巧妙的技术和实践，它可以用非常有利的方式控制颜色。我们的研究团队希望向大自然学习，发现大自然操纵光线流动的独特技术，以及产生明亮色彩的特殊方法。然后，我们将综合应用这些技术，以用于现代技术。动物和植物所显示的颜色可以通过几种截然不同的方式产生。我们在周围生活的世界中看到的大多数颜色都是由叶绿素和黑色素等化学颜料产生的。这些颜料吸收一些颜色，分散其他颜色。与这个项目特别相关的是一种特别独特的颜料，据说是荧光颜料。这种颜料通常会吸收紫外线，然后强烈地发出不同的颜色，可以是蓝色、绿色或红色。在某些情况下，非常小的规则间隔的结构，几百万分之一毫米宽，可以产生颜色，而不需要任何颜料。这种产生颜色的方法与在肥皂泡中产生颜色的方法相同，它依赖于光波与这些微小结构的规则排列相互作用。如果它们的大小恰到好处，它们就可以完全控制反射的光线的颜色。这种对光的操纵，即使是三维的，如果结构具有正确的形式，也是现代光学技术的一个令人难以置信的重要特征，并被有用地应用于高科技工业的许多不同领域。我们在这次调查中提议进行的项目非常令人兴奋，因为它包括对一些刚刚发现的东西的详细研究，但只是表面上的记录。在这一发现之前，科学并不知道自然界已经进化出同时使用荧光颜料和纳米结构来产生一种控制其产生的光发射的系统。在BBSRC资助的前一项工作(发表于2006年11月)中，我们的研究小组发现，一些蝴蝶通过荧光产生彩色光，然后通过使用非常小但规则的特殊结构来控制这种光从翅膀发出的方式。这一发现的真正不同寻常的部分是，这种蝴蝶的系统与科技中发现的一种发光系统非常相似，这是新一代高效发光二极管(LED)之一。换句话说，自然和技术在非常相似的设计上汇聚在一起，这些设计似乎优化了光的产生和发射方式。通过这项拟议的研究，我们希望更详细地了解这个和其他荧光自然系统；看看它们的光子设计是否可以用来使合成光学设备更加高效。该项目的结果将传达给国际科学界和光电子公司。该项目将提供有关蝴蝶、甲虫、蝎子和鸟类等色彩鲜艳的特殊自然动物生物学的基本新信息。它还将为在LED和导光网络等通信应用中控制表面颜色和操纵光线流动的有效方法提供新的技术思路。

The living world has been producing and using colour for hundreds of millions of years. By means of various forms of evolutionary selection pressures, nature has developed many ingenious techniques and practices with which it can control colour in highly advantageous ways. Our research team would like to learn from nature; to discover its unique techniques for manipulating the flow of light and its specialised methods for generating bright colour. We will then synthetically apply these techniques for use in modern technology . The colours displayed by animals and plants can be produced in several distinctly different ways. The majority of colour we see in the living world around us is produced using chemical pigments such as chlorophyll and melanin. These pigments absorb some colours and scatter others. Of special relevance to this project is a particularly distinctive sort of pigment that is said to be fluorescent. This sort of pigment usually absorbs ultra-violet light and then strongly reemits a different colour that can be blue, green or red. In certain cases, very small regularly spaced structures, a few millionths of a millimetre wide, can produce colour without the need for any pigment. This way of producing colour is the same as that which creates the colour in soap bubbles and it relies on light waves interacting with the regular arrangements of these tiny structures. If they are just the right size, they can completely control what colour of light is reflected. This manipulation of light, even in three dimensions if the structure has the right form, is an incredibly important feature of modern optical technology and is usefully employed in many different areas of high-tech industry. The project we propose to undertake in this investigation is exceptionally exciting because it comprises the detailed study of something which has only just been discovered but only superficially documented. Until this discovery, science didn't know that nature has evolved the simultaneous use of fluorescent pigment and nanostructure to produce a system that controls the emission of the light it produces. In previous BBSRC-funded work (published in November 2006), our research group discovered that some butterflies produce coloured light by fluorescence and then control the way in which this light is emitted from their wings by using a specialised form of very small but regular structure. The really exceptional part of this discovery is that this butterfly's system is very similar to a form of light emitting system that is found in technology, one of the new generation of high-efficiency light emitting diodes (LEDs). In other words, nature and technology have converged on very similar designs that appear to optimise the way that light can be produced and emitted. With this proposed study, we want to understand this and other fluorescent natural systems in far greater detail; to see if their photonic designs can be used to make synthetic optical devices much more efficient. The results of the project will be communicated to the international scientific community and to photonics companies. The project will provide fundamental new information about the biology of specialised natural brightly coloured animals such as butterflies, beetles, scorpions and birds. It will also provide new ideas for technology about efficient ways to control the colour of surfaces and to manipulate the flow of light in communication applications such as LEDs and light-guiding networks.