Brilliant Whiteness of Strange Beetle Explained

Forget bleach: this bug may be the key to whiter whites

By JR Minkel

Image: COURTESY OF PETE VUKUSIC/EXETER UNIVERSITY WHITE AS A BEETLE: An unusually white beetle sports a bright color despite having extremely thin scales compared with other white materials. Your walls, clothes and teeth not white enough for you? Good news: scientists have identified the source of the dazzling whiteness of a beetle called Cyphochilus, and harnessing that knowledge could help make everything from paints to t-shirts more blindingly white. It turns out that the bug's scales contain a porous network of random protein fibers that scatter all wavelengths of light strongly, the prerequisite for an intense white color. The beetle might not stand out against the brilliant blue of a butterfly, but "in terms of sheer design ingenuity, for me this is my favorite," says optical physicist Pete Vukusic of Exeter University in England, who has studied the bright coloring of dragonflies and butterflies.

Vukusic knew he was on to something when he saw Cyphochilus on an insect collector's Web site. "Something this amazingly bright and white had to be coming from something very thin," meaning its thin coat of scales, he says. "That in itself is quite interesting. Any industry can make something very white that's thick." The more layers a material has, he says, the stronger it can scatter light and the brighter its color can be. In this week's Science Vukusic and his colleagues report that the bug's five-micrometer-thick scales were whiter than a child's baby tooth, which is encased in a millimeter-thick layer of white enamel. They used an international standard to assess the beetle's relative whiteness. Electron microscopy revealed the scales are made of a tangle of seemingly randomly oriented filaments, each about 250 nanometers wide. A random microscopic structure is key to producing a white color, which results when all wavelengths of light scatter equally from a surface. If the surface contains any repeating pattern, it will reflect light of the wavelengths that match that pattern.

Image: COURTESY OF PETE VUKUSIC/EXETER UNIVERSITY WHITE STANDS OUT: White coloring is unusual in nature because it requires a surface to reflect all wavelengths of light strongly. To confirm the randomness of the filaments, the researchers took a cross-section image of the filament network and performed a mathematical technique called a Fourier transform, which reveals any repetition in a shape. They also shined a laser beam through one of the scales and projected the resulting pattern onto a curved surface. Any repetition in the scale's internal structure would show up in the pattern of projected light. Neither technique turned up any signs of nonrandomness, the group reports. Vukusic says the brightness of the color results from gaps of air between the filaments. Light scatters every time it passes between two materials that differ greatly in the speed of light through them, also called their refractive index. Like facets in a diamond, the more places light can scatter, the brighter the ultimate color. "If you separate the scattering centers, but not by too much, then you actually improve the efficiency at which the whole light spectrum is scattered," Vukusic says. If manufacturers can learn how to harness this effect, he says, they might be able to whiten just about anything that's white.

RELATED LINKS:

Butterfly Wings Share Light Tricks with TV

Hands of Light

Gladiators: A New Order of Insect

Photonic Crystals: Semiconductors of Light