In order to attract a mate, the male Pierella luna butterfly of Latin America uses its wingsto perform an advanced optical trick known as reverse color diffraction. Now, researchers at Harvard University have figured out a way to use artificial photonic materials to mimic the Pierella luna's attractive light show. They've created what's known as a diffraction grating, a surface that splits white light into its individual wavelengths of color and sends those colors traveling in different directions. When the photonic material is viewed from one angle, it looks to be one color, but from a different angle, the color appears to change, according to study co-author Mathias Kolle, a member of the Harvard research team and an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
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