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Marine Shells May Help Develop Responsive, Transparent Displays

The blue-rayed limpet is a tiny mollusk that lives in kelp beds along certain coasts. Scientists at MIT and Harvard University have identified two optical structures within the limpet's shell that give its blue-striped appearance. The structures are configured to reflect blue light while absorbing all other wavelengths of incoming light. The researchers speculate that such patterning may have evolved to protect the limpet, as the blue lines resemble the color displays on the shells of more poisonous soft-bodied snails. These findings represent the first evidence of an organism using mineralized structural components to produce optical displays. The researchers say such natural optical structures may serve as a design guide for engineering color-selective, controllable, transparent displays that require no internal light source and could be incorporated into windows and glasses.

Topics:
Displays/Monitors/HMIs Electronics & Computers Imaging Optics Photonics

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    Transcript

    00:00:05 This is the blue-rayed limpet. It is a tiny mollusk that lives in kelp beds along the coasts of Norway, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Portugal and the Canary Islands. These organisms may be small, their size is comparable to that of a human fingernail, but they have a unique and noticeable feature:

    00:00:23 bright-blue dotted lines that run in parallel along the length of their translucent shells. Now, scientists at MIT and Harvard University have identified the two optical structures within the limpets shell that give its blue-striped appearance. First, the researchers scanned the surface of the limpet shell and

    00:00:42 found no structural differences in areas with and without the stripes; an observation that led them to think that perhaps the stripes arose from features embedded deeper in the shell. To get a picture of what lay beneath the researchers used a combination of high-resolution 2-D and 3-D structural analysis

    00:00:58 to reveal the 3-D nano- architecture of the photonics structures embedded in the limpet's translucent shells. In the regions with blue stripes the shells top and bottom layers were relatively uniform, similar to the shell structure of other mollusks. However, about 30 microns beneath the shell

    00:01:16 surface the researchers noted a stark difference. In these regions the regular platelets of calcium carbonate morphed into two distinct structural features: a multilayered structure with regular spacing between calcium carbonate layers, resembling a zigzag pattern, and beneath this a layer of randomly dispersed

    00:01:34 spherical particles. Through a series of measurements and tests the researchers found that the zigzag pattern acts as a filter reflecting only blue light. As the rest of the incoming light passes through the shell the underlying particles absorb this light, an effect that makes the shell's stripes appear even

    00:01:50 more brilliantly blue. The researchers say such natural optical structures may serve as a design guide for engineering color-selective, controllable, transparent displays that require no internal light source and could even be incorporated into windows and glasses.