Journal
INTERFACE FOCUS
Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2018.0043
Keywords
biophotonic crystal; melanosomes; transfer matrix; effective-medium multilayer modelling; finite-difference time-domain
Categories
Funding
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research/European Office of Aerospace Research and Development AFOSR/EOARD [FA9550-15-1-0068]
- National Centre of Competence in Research 'Bio-Inspired Materials'
- Ambizione programme of the Swiss National Science Foundation [168223]
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The blue neck and breast feathers of the peacock are structurally coloured due to an intricate photonic crystal structure in the barbules consisting of a two-dimensionally ordered rectangular lattice of melanosomes (melanin rodlets) and air channels embedded in a keratin matrix. We here investigate the feather coloration by performing microspectrophotometry, imaging scatterometry and angle-dependent reflectance measurements. Using previously determined wavelength-dependent refractive indices of melanin and keratin, we interpret the spectral and spatial reflection characteristics by comparing the measured spectra to calculated spectra by effective-medium multilayer and full three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain modelling. Both modelling methods yield similar reflectance spectra indicating that simple multilayer modelling is adequate for a direct understanding of the brilliant coloration of peacock feathers.
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