Elucidation and reproduction of the iridescence of a jewel beetle

摘要

It is known that the structural colors of some beetles originate from multilayer thin-film interference. We investigated such an example, a jewel beetle Chrysochroa fulgidissima, to quantitatively characterize the coloration mechanisms. The essential physical factors of the iridescence were elucidated by careful determinations of the structural parameters, measurements of angle- and polarization-dependent reection spectra, and theoretical modeling of the multilayer system. On the basis of the elucidated coloration mechanisms, we successfully pre-pared a dielectric thin film structure that reproduces the iridescence of the jewel beetle.