Brilliant whiteness in shrimp from ultra-thin layers of birefringent nanospheres.

ABSTRACT: A fundamental question regarding light scattering is how whiteness, generated from multiple scattering, can be obtained from thin layers of materials. This challenge arises from the phenomenon of optical crowding, whereby, for scatterers packed with filling fractions higher than ~30%, reflectance is drastically reduced due to near-field coupling between the scatterers. Here we show that the extreme birefringence of isoxanthopterin nanospheres overcomes optical crowding effects, enabling multiple scattering and brilliant whiteness from ultra-thin chromatophore cells in shrimp. Strikingly, numerical simulations reveal that birefringence, originating from the spherulitic arrangement of isoxanthopterin molecules, enables intense broadband scattering almost up to the maximal packing for random

SUBMITTER: Lemcoff T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10241642 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature