Chinese scientists studying the wings of the Trogonoptera Brookiana butterfly have discovered that the light trapping structures which cause the iridescent colours we see are caused by two distinct types of nanostructure one on the front and one on the back of the wing.
Understanding how these natural structures function can give great insight for engineering materials with these properties and could have applications from solar cells to stealth technology.
Read this HOT article in full:
Light Trapping Structures in Wing Scales of Butterfly Trogonoptera Brookiana
Zhiwu Han , shichao niu , Chunhui Shang , Zhenning Liu and Luquan Ren
Nanoscale, 2012
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR12059C 
