Researchers at the University of Cambridge have devised a method to produce “Polymer Opals” on an industrial scale. Credit: Nick Saffell/University of Cambridge
This invention opens up applications ranging from smart clothing for people or buildings, to banknote security. Using a new method called Bend-Induced-Oscillatory-Shearing (BIOS), the researchers are now able to produce hundreds of metres of these materials, known as ‘polymer opals’, on a roll-to-roll process. Some of the brightest colours in nature can be found in opal gemstones, butterfly wings and beetles. These materials get their colour not from dyes or pigments, but from the systematically-ordered microstructures.
The team, based at Cambridge’s Cavendish Lab, have been working on methods of artificially recreating this ‘struc...
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