A Eurasian Jay (top) with one of its striped feathers (bottom).

How the jay bird got its stripes:
what nanotechnology and photonics can learn from biology

a public lecture by

Professor Richard Jones FRS

Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Sheffield

Wednesday 12 February 2020

6 pm – 7:20 pm

Newton Lecture Theatre INB0114 in the Isaac Newton building, University of Lincoln

Book a place

The striking appearance of the Eurasian Jay owes much to its beautiful striped feathers.  What’s interesting about these is that the colours of the feathers are not produced by a pigment – instead they are a result of an optical interference effect arising from the sub-micron structure created in the cells that form the feather. We’ve studied this structure – and analogous structures from beetle scales – using synchrotron x-ray radiation, and we find that these structures are characteristic of a process of controlled…