It’s all to do with light emission. The barbs on the parrot’s feather contain spongy 3D amorphous macroporous structures that produce a photonic band gap of 550nm, which coincides with the visible emission range of zinc oxide materials. So, scientists have used the parrot’s feather as a template to make zinc oxide photonic nanostructrues.
Zinc oxide has been studied for its UV light emitting property to make new classes of optical devices such as ZnO lasers. In this capacity, it’s important to suppress the visible emission caused by zinc or oxygen defects in the zinc oxide materials. But, its ordered structure leads to an unstable modulation of the emission spectra and limits its applications. Combining zinc oxide materials with photonic amorphous structures with stable photonic band gaps is therefore important, say the researchers.
Their new material reduces the visible emission and amplifies the UV emission.
Read the Nanoscale paper hot off the press today:
Fabrication of ZnO photonic amorphous diamond nanostructure from parrot feather for modulated photoluminescence properties
Z Zhang, K Yu, N Liao, H Yin, L Lou, Q Yu, Y Liao and Z Zhu,
Nanoscale, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/c1nr11079a
