July 30, 2014

Nature inspires a greener way to make colorful plastics



Long before humans figured out how to create colors, nature had already perfected the process — think stunning, bright butterfly wings of many different hues, for example. Now scientists are tapping into those secrets to develop a more environmentally friendly way to make colored plastics. Their paper on using structure — or the shapes and architectures of materials — rather than dyes, to produce color appears in the ACS journal Nano Letters.