Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 24: Bioinspired Functional Materials: From Nature’s Nanoarchitectures to Nanofabricated Designs

MM 24.3: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 10:30–11:00, HSZ 02

Cellulose bio-inspired hierarchical structures — •Silvia Vignolini — Lensfield Road Cambridge CB2 1EW UK

Nature's most vivid colours rely on the ability to produce complex and hierarchical photonic structures with lattice constants on the order of the wavelength of visible radiation. A recurring strategy design that is found both in the animal and plant kingdoms for producing such effects is the helicoidal multilayers. In such structures, a series of individual nano-fibers (made of natural polymers as cellulose and chitin) are arranged parallel to each other in stacked planes. When distance between such planes is comparable to the wavelength of light, a strong polarised, colour selective response can be obtained. These helicoidal multilayers are generally structured on the micro-scale and macroscopic scale giving rise to complex hierarchical structures.

Biomimetic with cellulose-based architectures enables us to fabricate novel photonic structures using low cost materials in ambient conditions. Importantly, it also allows us to understand the biological processes at work during the growth of these structures in plants. In this talk the route for the fabrication of complex bio-mimetic cellulose-based photonic structures will be presented and the optical properties of artificial structures will be analyzed and compared with the natural ones.