Organic Pixels from Butterflies

While this falls outside the normal areas covered here, it does appear to be some rather fascinating work. Besides, what good is work in graphics without a good display.

From the article:

"The wings of the male Cyanophrys remus are bright metallic blue on one side, thought to attract mates, and a dull green on the other to act as camouflage. ...each side of the wing contained different photonic structures. The metallic blue colour is produced by scales that are photonic single crystals whereas the dull green is the result of a random arrangement of photonic crystals. This randomly arranged structure may have powerful applications. The crystals can actually produce different colours – green, yellow and blue – depending on their orientation, but the overall effect in Cyanophrys remus is a dull green. The team also found a way to make the crystals generate red reflections. The red-green-blue palette could be used for flat-panel visual displays... by making an array of crystals mounted on microelectromechanical arms that could change their orientation. In that way it would be possible for each 'pixel' to produce red, green or blue."

From an outsiders perspective, this is quite amazing. I will leave those more versed in the area to make observations about how novel/unique this work is. The results, published in Physical Review E, can be found in this paper (PDF).