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The research group led by László Péter Biró in the Nanostructures Department of HAS' Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science have been working in the field of bio-inspired photonic nano-architectures for several years.

During a lecture Professor Biró gave in Taiwan, he was shown three identical-looking beetles, but with different colours, namely orange, green, and violet. Several months later, he and colleagues revealed a novel intercalated photonic nano-architecture composed of a regular multilayer and nanorods perpendicular to the layers in the elytra of this Taiwanese beetle (Trigonophorus rothschilid varians). The colour of the nano-architecture is determined by the distance of the layers, while the angle under which the colour is seen is determined by the random arrangement of nanorods. The researchers succeeded in producing artificial bio-inspired nano-architectures with behaviours very similar to those of the living model by a special procedure called nanomachining. Their results have attracted significant attention from the international scientific community, and have been published in the journal Interface of the Royal Society, and also displayed on the website of BBC News.

This was not the first time the research team successfully reproduced photonic nanostructures inspired by structures found in nature. Using certain butterfly species as models, they managed to artificially produce the nanostructure responsible for the colour of the animal.

The potential of such applications range from computers working with light instead of electrons, through displays visible in sunlight, to textiles coloured without pigments.