"Is there no end to the startling optical properties of butterfly wings?"
The question comes not from Vladimir Nabokov, who was as much a lepidopterist as prose stylist, but Nature Photonics--
"Although it has been known for some time that the nanostructures found on certain tropical butterflies exhibit photonic-bandgap effects and exceedingly high reflectivities, researchers have now demonstrated that they can act as optical vapour sensors that can outperform man-made designs.
Experiments performed by Radislav Potyrailo and his co-workers show that the reflectance spectra of the wing scales are not only highly sensitive to vapours, but also highly selective, giving a markedly different response for vapours from water, methanol, ethanol and three isomers of dichloroethylene. Artificially created replicas of these natural photonic structures could launch a new direction in the design of highly selective chemical sensors with straightforward colorimetric readout that could replace more complicated sensor'
Comments