03 Mar 2016 : Gerd Schröder-Turk

Nature’s amazing mazes : minimal surface forms in biology and chemistry

Speaker : Dr Gerd Schröder-Turk – Murdoch University

Venue    : 3 March 2016 – 4pm (Murdoch University, SC3.39)

Triply-periodic minimal surfaces are commonly observed as the spatial nanostructure of a variety of biological systems as well as self-assembled lipid or copolymer systems. In this talk I will explain what these negatively curved surfaces are, and give a variety of examples where they occur in nature. I will focus on the occurrence of these structures in a number of green butterfly species, where the structure acts as a photonic crystal. That is, the green coloration is the result of the nanostructure, not of a green pigment.

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