IMX Seminar Series - Color with a twist: self-assembly of cellulose nanocrystals for photonic applications

The most brilliant colours in nature are obtained by structuring transparent materials on the scale of the wavelength of visible light. By controlling/designing the dimensions of such nanostructures, it is possible to achieve extremely intense colourations over the entire visible spectrum without using pigments or colorants. Colour obtained through structure, namely structural colour, is incredibly widespread in the plant kingdom. Such natural photonic nanostructures are generally synthesised in ambient conditions using the most abundant biopolymer on the planet: cellulose. Given these limitations, an amazing range of optical structures exists: from very ordered photonic structures to partially disordered to completely random ones. Here, I will introduce some striking examples of natural photonic structures and review our recent advances to fabricate bio-mimetic photonic structures using the same material as nature. Developing biomimetic structures with cellulose enables us to fabricate novel photonic materials using low-cost polymers in ambient conditions. Importantly, it also allows us to understand the biological processes at work during the growth of these structures in plants.
https://www.mpikg.mpg.de/sbm
https://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/group/vignolini
Bio: Silvia Vignolini is the Director of the Sustainable and Bio-inspired Materials Department at the Max Plank for Colloid and Interfaces in Potsdam and a University Professor in Sustainability and Bio-inspired materials at the Chemistry Department in Cambridge. She studied Physics at the University of Florence, Italy. In 2009, she was awarded a PhD in Solid State Physics at the European Laboratory for non-Linear Spectroscopy and the Physics Department at the University of Florence. In 2010, she moved to Cambridge as a post-doctoral research associate working in the Cavendish Laboratory and the Plant Science Department. Her research interest lies at the interface of chemistry, soft-matter physics, optics, and biology. In particular, her research focuses on the study of how biopolymers are assembled into complex architectures within living organisms and how they can be exploited to fabricate a sustainable functional materials.