Scientists have managed to mimic the brilliant white colour of a beetle’s scales which could hold the key to making a highly effective, sustainable paint from recycled plastic waste.
Cyphochilus beetles, found in South East Asia, have thousands of miniscule scales of differing sizes. These bounce light between them in such that they create a colour far whiter than paper or any artificial material produced so far. Existing paints can achieve a similar, less intense, light-scattering effect but these rely on titanium dioxide, which contributes to climate change.
“In the natural world, whiteness is usually created by a foamy, Swiss cheese-like structure – until now, how these structures have evolved light-scattering properties has remained a mystery,” said Andrew Parnell, of the University of Sheffield, who worked on the project with Dulux paint.
“Having understood them, we were then able to take plastic and structure it in the same way.”
Low carbon paint
Dr Parnell hopes to recycle waste that would normally be burnt or sent to landfill, structure it like the beetle scales and use it as the basis for a super-white, sustainable paint.
“This would make paint with a much lower carbon footprint and help to tackle the challenge of recycling single-use plastics,” he said.
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Stephanie Burg, a PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield, said: “We hope these lessons from nature will help inform the future of sustainable manufacturing for paint.”
To measure the tiny individual beetle scales, researchers used a technique called X-ray tomography, which is similar to a CT. The study is published in Nature Communications Chemistry. The work was carried out in collaboration with the coatings company AkzoNobel, makers of Dulux paint.