孔雀羽毛是生物结构色的典型代表。 作者采用扫描电镜和光纤光谱仪观察了羽毛表面结构和反射光谱, 低倍SEM表面观察结果表明孔雀尾羽“眼斑”处艳丽的色彩源于光子晶体的微结构特性, 不同的色彩部位源于微结构不同的表面形状及不同的结构周期; 反射光谱表明, 反射光谱的峰位随着入射角度的改变而改变, 填充液填充后反射峰位发生移动。 该研究为制作类似孔雀羽毛光子晶体结构的功能复合材料提供了依据。

Peacock feather is one of the typical cases with structural colors. In the present article, we found that flamboyant colors in the “eye spot” of male peacock came from photonic crystal structure by observing the surface texture with SEM and reflectance spectrum with fiber spectrometer, and different color regions correspond to various structure cycles and surface appearances of the microstructure. The reflectance spectrum showed that the location of reflective peak shifted with the changes in the incident angles. The theory that the color is caused by microstructure was verified by the phenomenon that reflective peak exhibited red-shift with the time-varying after soaking in isopropyl alcohol. This study paves the way for fabricating functional composite materials with peacock feather-like photonic crystal structure.