Many animal species display exceptionally bright iridescent coloration caused by interference or diffraction from a periodic surface microstructure. Although many mollusks are colored, only few utilize such a form of structural coloration. We are not referring to the well-known pearly appearance that is due to the nacreous layer found on the inner surfaces of most shells, but to small brightly colored spots on the outer surface. The Helcion pruinosus is one such example. We show by optical measurements and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) that coloration in this shell is indeed of a structural nature based on thin-film interference from a layered quarter-wave stack tilted by approximately 24° with respect to the outer surface. The microstructure is embedded in the transparent top layer of the shell approximately 50 μm below the surface. By comparing the SEM and optical measurements, we were able to establish that the layered structure is made from a birefringent material (crystalline aragonite) giving slightly different spectral peaks for S- and P-type reflections.

© 2002 Optical Society of America

[Optical Society of America ]

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Article level metrics are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

Related Journal Articles

• Semitransparent metal or distributed Bragg reflector for wide-viewing-angle organic light-emitting-diode microcavities (JOSAB)
• Growth and property characterizations of photonic crystal structures consisting of colloidal microparticles (JOSAB)
• Improved attenuated-total-reflection technique for measuring the electro-optic coefficients of nonlinear optical polymers (JOSAB)
• Ultra-sensitive surface absorption spectroscopy using sub-wavelength diameter optical fibers (OE)
• Ultra-sensitive fluorescence spectroscopy of isolated surface-adsorbed molecules using an optical nanofiber (OE)

Related Conference Papers

• Rare-Earth-Doped Yttria Waveguides Grown by Pulsed Laser Deposition
• En Route to Electrically Pumpable Cr2+ Doped II-VI Semiconductor Lasers
• Recording of polarization holograms in photodarkened amorphous As2S3 thin films
• Improved Fourier transform technique to determine second-order optical nonlinearity profiles
• Visualization of Ferroelectric Domains of Multiferroic BiFeO3 Thin Films Using Terahertz Radiation as a Sensitive Probe