Biophotonic materials with varying degrees of order

The bright colors of many organisms such as butterflies and beetles originate from complex 3D dielectric nano-structures. Interestingly, despite their beautiful coloration these photonic structures are far from perfect, and often contain a “certain amount” of structural disorder. While this is optimized in nature, man-made approaches to producing similarly brilliant colors are still in their infancy. Currently, the big stumbling block is the lack of a measure of the degree of order in the biological “blueprint”. We propose the use of ultra-small-angle X-ray scattering (USAXS) for a statistically meaningful quantification of the degree of order in 3D photonic structures found in weevil scales that contain various degrees of disorder, nicely demonstrating nature’s common approach towards producing distinct coloration. We therefore expect the USAXS experiments proposed here to shed light on the fundamental coloration mechanisms in weevils and similar biophotonic structures.