Programmable nanospheres unlock nature’s 500-million-year-old color secrets

Half a billion years ago, nature evolved a remarkable trick: generating vibrant, shimmering colors via intricate, microscopic structures in feathers, wings and shells that reflect light in precise ways. Now, researchers from Trinity have taken a major step forward in harnessing it for advanced materials science.

A team led by Professor Colm Delaney from Trinity’s School of Chemistry and AMBER, the Research Ireland Center for Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research, has developed a pioneering method, inspired by nature, to create and program structural colors using a cutting-edge microfabrication technique.

The work could have major implications for environmental sensing, biomedical diagnostics, and photonic materials. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

At the heart of the breakthrough is the precise control of nanosphere self-assembly—a notoriously difficult challenge in materials science. Teodora Faraone, a Ph.D. Candidate at Trinity, used a specialized high-resolution 3D-printing technique to control the order and arrangement of nanospheres, allowing them to interact with light in ways that produce all the colors of the rainbow in a controlled manner.

“This was the central challenge of the ERC project,” said Prof. Delaney, who is en route to Purdue University to present the landmark findings at the MARSS conference on microscale and nanoscale manipulation. “We now have a way to fine-tune nanostructures to reflect brilliant, programmable colors.”

One of the most exciting aspects of the newly developed material is its extreme sensitivity: The structural colors shift in response to minute changes in their environment, which opens up new opportunities for chemical and biological sensing applications.

Dr. Jing Qian, a postdoctoral researcher and computational specialist on the team, helped confirm the experimental results through detailed simulations, providing deeper insights into how the nanospheres organize themselves.

The team is already combining the color-programming technique with responsive materials to develop tiny microsensors that change color in real time. These sensors are being developed as part of the IV-Lab Project, a European Innovation Council Pathfinder Challenge led by the Italian Institute of Technology, with a key goal being the development of implantable devices capable of tracking biochemical changes inside the human body.

“Collaboration has been key to this discovery, as it has been the combination of chemistry, materials science, and physics that has ultimately enabled us to harness an ability that nature and its weird and wonderful creations have been perfecting for millions of years,” said Prof. Delaney, noting the contributions of fellow principal investigators at Trinity, Prof. Larisa Florea (School of Chemistry) and Prof. Louise Bradley (School of Physics).

“From ancient feathers to next-generation medical sensors, the future of color is brighter—and smaller—than ever.”