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Becky Bruce reporting Mother Nature could hold the key to the future of computing.
Researchers have tried for years to build a "photonic crystal"; a key to building super-fast optical computers.
University of Utah chemists have found that nature has already designed photonic crystals in the shimmering, iridescent green scales of a beetle from Brazil.
"It appears that a simple creature like a beetle provides us with one of the technologically most sought-after structures for the next generation of computing," says study leader Michael Bartl, an assistant professor of chemistry and adjunct assistant professor of physics at the University of Utah.
"Nature has simple ways of making structures and materials that are still unobtainable with our million-dollar instruments and engineering strategies," Bartl said.
The beetle is an inch-long weevil named Lamprocyphus augustus. The discovery of its scales' crystal structure represents the first time scientists have been able to work with a material with the ideal or "champion" architecture for a photonic crystal.
Harnessing that shimmer could revolutionize computing. "You would be able to solve certain problems that we are not able to solve now," Bartl says. "For certain problems, an optical computer could do in seconds what regular computers need years for."
Now that Bartl's found the beetle, he's got to find a way to replicate its natural properties with electronics.
The study will be published this week in the journal Physical Review E.
E-mail: bbruce@ksl.com
