Structural Diversity of Arthropod Biophotonic Nanostructures
Spans Amphiphilic Phase-Space
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Abstract
Many organisms, especially arthropods, produce vivid interference
colors using diverse mesoscopic (100–350 nm) integumentary
biophotonic nanostructures that are increasingly being investigated
for technological applications. Despite a century of interest, precise
structural knowledge of many biophotonic nanostructures and the mechanisms
controlling their development remain tentative, when such knowledge
can open novel biomimetic routes to facilely self-assemble tunable,
multifunctional materials. Here, we use synchrotron small-angle X-ray
scattering and electron microscopy to characterize the photonic nanostructure
of 140 integumentary scales and setae from ∼127 species of
terrestrial arthropods in 85 genera from 5 orders. We report a rich
nanostructural diversity, including triply periodic bicontinuous networks,
close-packed spheres, inverse columnar, perforated lamellar, and disordered
spongelike morphologies, commonly observed as stable phases of amphiphilic
surfactants, block copolymer, and lyotropic lipid–water systems.
Diverse arthropod lineages appear to have independently evolved to
utilize the self-assembly of infolding lipid-bilayer membranes to
develop biophotonic nanostructures that span the phase-space of amphiphilic
morphologies, but at optical length scales