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Australian peacock spiders, photonic nanostructures, and making money

Researcher Bor-Kai Hsiung’s work has graced this blog before but the topic was tarantulas and their structural colour. This time, it’s all about Australian peacock spiders and their structural colour according to a December 22, 2017 news item on ScienceDaily,

Even if you are arachnophobic, you probably have seen pictures or videos of Australian peacock spiders (Maratus spp.). These tiny spiders are only 1-5 mm long but are famous for their flamboyant courtship displays featuring diverse and intricate body colorations, patterns, and movements.

The spiders extremely large anterior median eyes have excellent color vision and combine with their bright colors to make peacock spiders cute enough to cure most people of their arachnophobia. But these displays aren’t just pretty to look at, they also inspire new ways for humans to produce color in technology.

One species of peacock spider — the rainbow peacock spider (Maratus robinsoni) is particularly neat, because it showcases an intense rainbow iridescent signal in males’ courtship displays to the females. This is the first known instance in nature of males using an entire rainbow of colors to entice females. Dr. Bor-Kai Hsiung led an international team of researchers from the US (UAkron, Cal Tech, UC San Diego, UNL [University of Nebraska-Lincoln]), Belgium (Ghent University), Netherlands (UGroningen), and Australia to discover how rainbow peacock spiders produce this unique multi-color iridescent signal.

A December 22, 2017 Ghent University (Belgium) press release on Alpha Galileo, which originated the news item, provides more technical detail,

Using a diverse array of research techniques, including light and electron microscopy, hyperspectral imaging, imaging scatterometry, nano 3D printing and optical modeling, the team found the origin of this intense rainbow iridescence emerged from specialized abdominal scales of the spiders. These scales have an airfoil-like microscopic 3D contour with nanoscale diffraction grating structures on the surface.

The interaction between the surface nano-diffraction grating and the microscopic curvature of the scales enables separation and isolation of light into its component wavelengths at finer angles and smaller distances than are possible with current manmade engineering technologies.

Inspiration from these super iridescent scales can be used to overcome current limitations in spectral manipulation, and to further reduce the size of optical spectrometers for applications where fine-scale spectral resolution is required in a very small package, notably instruments on space missions, or wearable chemical detection systems. And it could have a wide array of implications to fields ranging from life sciences and biotechnologies to material sciences and engineering.

Here’s a video of an Australian rainbow peacock spider,

Here’s more from the YouTube description published on April 13, 2017 by Peacockspiderman,

Scenes of Maratus robinsoni, a spider Peter Robinson discovered and David Hill and I named it after him in 2012. You can read our description on pages 36-41 in Peckhamia 103.2, which can be downloaded from the Peckhamia website http://peckhamia.com/peckhamia_number…. This is one of the two smallest species of peacock spider (2.5 mm long) and the only spider we know of in which colour changes occur every time it moves, this video was created to document this. Music: ‘Be Still’ by Johannes Bornlöf licensed through my MCN ‘Brave Bison’ from ‘Epidemic Sound’ For licensing inquiries please contact Brave Bison licensing@bravebison.io

The University of California at San Diego also published a December 22, 2017 news release about this work, which covers some of the same ground while providing a few new tidbits of information,

Brightly colored Australian peacock spiders (Maratus spp.) captivate even the most arachnophobic viewers with their flamboyant courtship displays featuring diverse and intricate body colorations, patterns, and movements – all packed into miniature bodies measuring less than five millimeters in size for many species. However, these displays are not just pretty to look at. They also inspire new ways for humans to produce color in technology.

One species of peacock spider – the rainbow peacock spider (Maratus robinsoni) – is particularly impressive, because it showcases an intense rainbow iridescent signal in males’ courtship displays to females. This is the first known instance in nature of males using an entire rainbow of colors to entice females to mate. But how do males make their rainbows? A new study published in Nature Communications looked to answer that question.

Figuring out the answers was inherently interdisciplinary so Bor-Kai Hsiung, a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, assembled an international team that included biologists, physicists and engineers. Starting while he was a Ph.D. student at The University of Akron under the mentorship of Todd Blackledge and Matthew Shawkey, the team included researchers from UA, Scripps Oceanography, California Institute of Technology, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Ghent in Belgium, University of Groningen in Netherlands, and Australia to discover how rainbow peacock spiders produce this unique iridescent signal.

The team investigated the spider’s photonic structures using techniques that included light and electron microscopy, hyperspectral imaging, imaging scatterometry and optical modeling to generate hypotheses about how the spider’s scale generate such intense rainbows. The team then used cutting-edge nano 3D printing to fabricate different prototypes to test and validate their hypotheses. In the end, they found that the intense rainbow iridescence emerged from specialized abdominal scales on the spiders. These scales combine an airfoil-like microscopic 3D contour with nanoscale diffraction grating structures on the surface. It is the interaction between the surface nano-diffraction grating and the microscopic curvature of the scales that enables separation and isolation of light into its component wavelengths at finer angles and smaller distances than are possible with current engineering technologies.

“Who knew that such a small critter would create such an intense iridescence using extremely sophisticated mechanisms that will inspire optical engineers,” said Dimitri Deheyn, Hsuing’s advisor at Scripps Oceanography and a coauthor of the study.

For Hsiung, the finding wasn’t quite so unexpected.

“One of the main questions that I wanted to address in my Ph.D. dissertation was ‘how does nature modulate iridescence?’ From a biomimicry perspective, to fully understand and address a question, one has to take extremes from both ends into consideration. I purposefully chose to study these tiny spiders with intense iridescence after having investigated the non-iridescent blue tarantulas,” said Hsiung.

The mechanism behind these tiny rainbows may inspire new color technology, but would not have been discovered without research combining basic natural history with physics and engineering, the researchers said.

“Nanoscale 3D printing allowed us to experimentally validate our models, which was really exciting,” said Shawkey. “We hope that these techniques will become common in the future.”

“As an engineer, what I found fascinating about these spider structural colors is how these long evolved complex structures can still outperform human engineering,” said Radwanul Hasan Siddique, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech and study coauthor. “Even with high-end fabrication techniques, we could not replicate the exact structures. I wonder how the spiders assemble these fancy structural patterns in the first place!”

Inspiration from these super iridescent spider scales can be used to overcome current limitations in spectral manipulation, and to reduce the size of optical spectrometers for applications where fine-scale spectral resolution is required in a very small package, notably instruments on space missions, or wearable chemical detection systems.

In the end, peacock spiders don’t just produce nature’s smallest rainbows.They could also have implications for a wide array of fields ranging from life sciences and biotechnologies to material sciences and engineering.

Before citing the paper and providing a link, here’s a story by Robert F. Service for Science magazine about attempts to capitalize on ‘spider technology’, in this case spider silk,

The hype over spider silk has been building since 1710. That was the year François Xavier Bon de Saint Hilaire, president of the Royal Society of Sciences in Montpellier, France, wrote to his colleagues, “You will be surpriz’d to hear, that Spiders make a Silk, as beautiful, strong and glossy, as common Silk.” Modern pitches boast that spider silk is five times stronger than steel yet more flexible than rubber. If it could be made into ropes, a macroscale web would be able to snare a jetliner.

The key word is “if.” Researchers first cloned a spider silk gene in 1990, in hopes of incorporating it into other organisms to produce the silk. (Spiders can’t be farmed like silkworms because they are territorial and cannibalistic.) Today, Escherichia coli bacteria, yeasts, plants, silkworms, and even goats have been genetically engineered to churn out spider silk proteins, though the proteins are often shorter and simpler than the spiders’ own. Companies have managed to spin those proteins into enough high-strength thread to produce a few prototype garments, including a running shoe by Adidas and a lightweight parka by The North Face. But so far, companies have struggled to mass produce these supersilks.

Some executives say that may finally be about to change. One Emeryville, California-based startup, Bolt Threads, says it has perfected growing spider silk proteins in yeast and is poised to turn out tons of spider silk thread per year. In Lansing, Michigan, Kraig Biocraft Laboratories says it needs only to finalize negotiations with silkworm farms in Vietnam to produce mass quantities of a combination spider/silkworm silk, which the U.S. Army is now testing for ballistics protection. …

I encourage you to read Service’s article in its entirety if the commercialization prospects for spider silk interest you as it includes gems such as this,

Spider silk proteins are already making their retail debut—but in cosmetics and medical devices, not high-strength fibers. AMSilk grows spider silk proteins in E. coli and dries the purified protein into powders or mixes it into gels, for use as additives for personal care products, such as moisture-retaining skin lotions. The silk proteins supposedly help the lotions form a very smooth, but breathable, layer over the skin. Römer says the company now sells tons of its purified silk protein ingredients every year.

Finally, here’s a citation for and a link to the paper about Australian peacock spiders and nanophotonics,

Rainbow peacock spiders inspire miniature super-iridescent optics by Bor-Kai Hsiung, Radwanul Hasan Siddique, Doekele G. Stavenga, Jürgen C. Otto, Michael C. Allen, Ying Liu, Yong-Feng Lu, Dimitri D. Deheyn, Matthew D. Shawkey, & Todd A. Blackledge. Nature Communications 8, Article number: 2278 (2017) doi:10.1038/s41467-017-02451-x Published online: 22 December 2017

This paper is open access.

As for Bor-Kai Hsiung’s other mentions here:

How tarantulas get blue (December 7, 2015 posting)

Noniridescent photonics inspired by tarantulas (October 19, 2016 posting)

More on the blue tarantula noniridescent photonics (December 28, 2016 posting)

Cientifica’s latest smart textiles and wearable electronics report

After publishing a report on wearable technology in May 2016 (see my June 2, 2016 posting), Cientifica has published another wearable technology report, this one is titled, Smart Textiles and Wearables: Markets, Applications and Technologies. Here’s more about the latest report from the report order page,

“Smart Textiles and Wearables: Markets, Applications and Technologies” examines the markets for textile based wearable technologies, the companies producing them and the enabling technologies. This is creating a 4th industrial revolution for the textiles and fashion industry worth over $130 billion by 2025.

Advances in fields such as nanotechnology, organic electronics (also known as plastic electronics) and conducting polymers are creating a range of textile–based technologies with the ability to sense and react to the world around them.  This includes monitoring biometric data such as heart rate, the environmental factors such as temperature and The presence of toxic gases producing real time feedback in the form of electrical stimuli, haptic feedback or changes in color.

The report identifies three distinct generations of textile wearable technologies.

First generation is where a sensor is attached to apparel and is the approach currently taken by major sportswear brands such as Adidas, Nike and Under Armour
Second generation products embed the sensor in the garment as demonstrated by products from Samsung, Alphabet, Ralph Lauren and Flex.
In third generation wearables the garment is the sensor and a growing number of companies including AdvanPro, Tamicare and BeBop sensors are making rapid progress in creating pressure, strain and temperature sensors.

Third generation wearables represent a significant opportunity for new and established textile companies to add significant value without having to directly compete with Apple, Samsung and Intel.

The report predicts that the key growth areas will be initially sports and wellbeing

followed by medical applications for patient monitoring. Technical textiles, fashion and entertainment will also be significant applications with the total market expected to rise to over $130 billion by 2025 with triple digit compound annual growth rates across many applications.

The rise of textile wearables also represents a significant opportunity for manufacturers of the advanced materials used in their manufacture. Toray, Panasonic, Covestro, DuPont and Toyobo are already suppling the necessary materials, while researchers are creating sensing and energy storage technologies, from flexible batteries to graphene supercapacitors which will power tomorrows wearables. The report details the latest advances and their applications.

This report is based on an extensive research study of the wearables and smart textile markets backed with over a decade of experience in identifying, predicting and sizing markets for nanotechnologies and smart textiles. Detailed market figures are given from 2016-2025, along with an analysis of the key opportunities, and illustrated with 139 figures and 6 tables.

The September 2016 report is organized differently and has a somewhat different focus from the report published in May 2016. Not having read either report, I’m guessing that while there might be a little repetition, you might better consider them to be companion volumes.

Here’s more from the September 2016 report’s table of contents which you can download from the order page (Note: The formatting has been changed),

SMART TEXTILES AND WEARABLES:
MARKETS, APPLICATIONS AND
TECHNOLOGIES

Contents  1
List of Tables  4
List of Figures  4
Introduction  8
How to Use This Report  8
Wearable Technologies and the 4Th Industrial Revolution  9
The Evolution of Wearable Technologies  10
Defining Smart Textiles  15
Factors Affecting The Adoption of Smart Textiles for Wearables  18
Cost  18
Accuracy  18
On Shoring  19
Power management  19
Security and Privacy  20
Markets  21
Total Market Growth and CAGR  21
Market Growth By Application  21
Adding Value To Textiles Through Technology  27
How Nanomaterials Add Functionality and Value  31
Business Models  33
Applications  35
Sports and Wellbeing  35
1st Generation Technologies  35
Under Armour Healthbox Wearables  35
Adidas MiCoach  36
Sensoria  36
EMPA’s Long Term Research  39
2nd Generation Technologies  39
Google’s Project Jacquard  39
Samsung Creative Lab  43
Microsoft Collaborations  44
Intel Systems on a Chip  44
Flex (Formerly Flextronics) and MAS Holdings  45
Jiobit  46
Asensei Personal Trainer  47
OmSignal Smart Clothing  48
Ralph Lauren PoloTech  49
Hexoskin Performance Management  50
Jabil Circuit Textile Heart Monitoring  51
Stretch Sense Sensors  52
NTT Data and Toray  54
Goldwin Inc. and DoCoMo  55
SupaSpot Inc Smart Sensors  55
Wearable Experiments and Brand Marketing  56
Wearable Life Sciences Antelope  57
Textronics NuMetrex  59
3rd Generation Technologies  60
AdvanPro Pressure Sensing Shoes  60
Tamicare 3D printed Wearables with Integrated Sensors  62
AiQ Smart Clothing Stainless Steel Yarns  64
Flex Printed Inks And Conductive Yarns  66
Sensing Tech Conductive Inks  67
EHO Textiles Body Motion Monitoring  68
Bebop Sensors Washable E-Ink Sensors  70
Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research Piezolectric Polymer
Sensors  71
CLIM8 GEAR Heated Textiles  74
VTT Smart Clothing Human Thermal Model  74
ATTACH (Adaptive Textiles Technology with Active Cooling and Heating) 76
Energy Storage and Generation  78
Intelligent Textiles Military Uniforms  78
BAE Systems Broadsword Spine  79
Stretchable Batteries  80
LG Chem Cable Batteries  81
Supercapacitors  83
Swinburne Graphene Supercapacitors  83
MIT Niobium Nanowire Supercapacitors  83
Energy Harvesting  86
Kinetic  86
StretchSense Energy Harvesting Kit  86
NASA Environmental Sensing Fibers  86
Solar  87
Powertextiles  88
Sphelar Power Corp Solar Textiles  88
Ohmatex and Powerweave  89
Fashion  89
1st Generation Technologies  92
Cute Circuit LED Couture  92
MAKEFASHION LED Couture  94
2nd Generation Technologies  94
Covestro Luminous Clothing  94
3rd Generation Technologies  96
The Unseen Temperature Sensitive Dyes  96
Entertainment  98
Wearable Experiments Marketing  98
Key Technologies 100
Circuitry  100
Conductive Inks for Fabrics  100
Conductive Ink For Printing On Stretchable Fabrics  100
Creative Materials Conductive Inks And Adhesives  100
Dupont Stretchable Electronic Inks  101
Aluminium Inks From Alink Co  101
Conductive Fibres  102
Circuitex Silver Coated Nylon  102
Textronics Yarns and Fibres  102
Novonic Elastic Conductive Yarn  103
Copper Coated Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) Fibres  103
Printed electronics  105
Covestro TPU Films for Flexible Circuits  105
Sensors  107
Electrical  107
Hitoe  107
Cocomi  108
Panasonic Polymer Resin  109
Cardiac Monitoring  110
Mechanical  113
Strain  113
Textile-Based Weft Knitted Strain Sensors  113
Chain Mail Fabric for Smart Textiles  113
Nano-Treatment for Conductive Fiber/Sensors 115
Piezoceramic materials  116
Graphene-Based Woven Fabric  117
Pressure Sensing  117
LG Innotek Flexible Textile Pressure Sensors  117
Hong Kong Polytechnic University Pressure Sensing Fibers  119
Conductive Polymer Composite Coatings  122
Printed Textile Sensors To Track Movement  125
Environment  127
Photochromic Textiles  127
Temperature  127
Sefar PowerSens  127
Gasses & Chemicals  127
Textile Gas Sensors  127
Energy  130
Storage  130
Graphene Supercapacitors  130
Niobium Nanowire Supercapacitors  130
Stretchy supercapacitors  132
Energy Generation  133
StretchSense Energy Harvesting Kit  133
Piezoelectric Or Thermoelectric Coated Fibres  134
Optical  137
Light Emitting  137
University of Manchester Electroluminescent Inks and Yarns 137
Polyera Wove  138
Companies Mentioned  141
List of Tables
Table 1 CAGR by application  22
Table 2 Value of market by application 2016-25 (millions USD)  24
Table 3 % market share by application  26
Table 4 CAGR 2016-25 by application  26
Table 5 Technology-Enabled Market Growth in Textile by Sector (2016-22) 28
Table 6 Value of nanomaterials by sector 2016-22 ($ Millions)  33
List of Figures
Figure 1 The 4th Industrial Revolution (World Economic Forum)  9
Figure 2 Block Diagram of typical MEMS digital output motion sensor: ultra
low-power high performance 3-axis “femto” accelerometer used in
fitness tracking devices.  11
Figure 3 Interior of Fitbit Flex device (from iFixit)  11
Figure 4 Internal layout of Fitbit Flex. Red is the main CPU, orange is the
BTLE chip, blue is a charger, yellow is the accelerometer (from iFixit)  11
Figure 5 Intel’s Curie processor stretches the definition of ‘wearable’  12
Figure 6 Typical Textile Based Wearable System Components  13
Figure 7 The Chromat Aeros Sports Bra “powered by Intel, inspired by wind, air and flight.”  14
Figure 8 The Evolution of Smart textiles  15
Figure 9 Goldwin’s C2fit IN-pulse sportswear using Toray’s Hitoe  16
Figure 10 Sensoglove reads grip pressure for golfers  16
Figure 11 Textile Based Wearables Growth 2016-25(USD Millions)  21
Figure 12 Total market for textile based wearables 2016-25 (USD Millions)  22
Figure 13 Health and Sports Market Size 2016-20 (USD Millions)  23
Figure 14 Health and Sports Market Size 2016-25 (USD Millions)  23
Figure 15 Critical steps for obtaining FDA medical device approval  25
Figure 16 Market split between wellbeing and medical 2016-25  26
Figure 17 Current World Textile Market by Sector (2016)  27
Figure 18 The Global Textile Market By Sector ($ Millions)  27
Figure 19 Compound Annual Growth Rates (CAGR) by Sector (2016-25)  28
Figure 20 The Global Textile Market in 2022  29
Figure 21 The Global Textile Market in 2025  30
Figure 22 Textile Market Evolution (2012-2025)  30
Figure 23 Total Value of Nanomaterials in Textiles 2012-2022 ($ Millions)  31
Figure 24 Value of Nanomaterials in Textiles by Sector 2016-2025 ($ Millions) 32
Figure 25 Adidas miCoach Connect Heart Rate Monitor  36
Figure 26 Sensoria’s Hear[t] Rate Monitoring Garments . 37
Figure 27 Flexible components used in Google’s Project Jacquard  40
Figure 28 Google and Levi’s Smart Jacket  41
Figure 29 Embedded electronics Google’s Project Jacquard  42
Figure 30 Samsung’s WELT ‘smart’ belt  43
Figure 31 Samsung Body Compass at CES16  44
Figure 32 Lumo Run washable motion sensor  45
Figure 33 OMSignal’s Smart Bra  49
Figure 34 PoloTech Shirt from Ralph Lauren  50
Figure 35 Hexoskin Data Acquisition and Processing  51
Figure 36 Peak+™ Hear[t] Rate Monitoring Garment  52
Figure 37 StretchSense CEO Ben O’Brien, with a fabric stretch sensor  53
Figure 38 C3fit Pulse from Goldwin Inc  55
Figure 39 The Antelope Tank-Top  58
Figure 40 Sportswear with integrated sensors from Textronix  60
Figure 41 AdvanPro’s pressure sensing insoles  61
Figure 42 AdvanPro’s pressure sensing textile  62
Figure 43 Tamicare 3D Printing Sensors and Apparel  63
Figure 44 Smart clothing using stainless steel yarns and textile sensors from AiQ  65
Figure 45 EHO Smart Sock  69
Figure 46 BeBop Smart Car Seat Sensor  71
Figure 47 Non-transparent printed sensors from Fraunhofer ISC  73
Figure 48 Clim8 Intelligent Heat Regulating Shirt  74
Figure 49 Temperature regulating smart fabric printed at UC San Diego  76
Figure 50 Intelligent Textiles Ltd smart uniform  79
Figure 51 BAE Systems Broadsword Spine  80
Figure 52 LG Chem cable-shaped lithium-ion battery powers an LED display even when twisted and strained  81
Figure 53 Supercapacitor yarn made of niobium nanowires  84
Figure 54 Sphelar Textile  89
Figure 55 Sphelar Textile Solar Cells  89
Figure 56 Katy Perry wears Cute Circuit in 2010  91
Figure 57 Cute Circuit K Dress  93
Figure 58 MAKEFASHION runway at the Brother’s “Back to Business” conference, Nashville 2016  94
Figure 59 Covestro material with LEDs are positioned on formable films made from thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU).  95
Figure 60 Unseen headpiece, made of 4000 conductive Swarovski stones, changes color to correspond with localized brain activity  96
Figure 61 Eighthsense a coded couture piece.  97
Figure 62 Durex Fundawear  98
Figure 63 Printed fabric sensors from the University of Tokyo  100
Figure 64 Tony Kanaan’s shirt with electrically conductive nano-fibers  107
Figure 65 Panasonic stretchable resin technology  109
Figure 66 Nanoflex moniroring system  111
Figure 67 Knitted strain sensors  113
Figure 68 Chain Mail Fabric for Smart Textiles  114
Figure 69 Electroplated Fabric  115
Figure 70 LG Innotek flexible textile pressure sensors  118
Figure 71 Smart Footwear installed with fabric sensors. (Credit: Image courtesy of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)  120
Figure 72 SOFTCEPTOR™ textile strain sensors  122
Figure 73 conductive polymer composite coating for pressure sensing  123
Figure 74 Fraunhofer ISC_ printed sensor  125
Figure 75 The graphene-coated yarn sensor. (Image: ETRI)  128
Figure 76 Supercapacitor yarn made of niobium nanowires  131
Figure 77 StretchSense Energy Harvesting Kit  134
Figure 78 Energy harvesting textiles at the University of Southampton  135
Figure 79 Polyera Wove Flexible Screen  139

If you compare that with the table of contents for the May 2016 report in my June 2, 2016 posting, you can see the difference.

Here’s one last tidbit, a Sept. 15, 2016 news item on phys.org highlights another wearable technology report,

Wearable tech, which was seeing sizzling sales growth a year ago [2015], is cooling this year amid consumer hesitation over new devices, a survey showed Thursday [Sept. 15, 2016].

The research firm IDC said it expects global sales of wearables to grow some 29.4 percent to some 103 million units in 2016.

That follows 171 percent growth in 2015, fueled by the launch of the Apple Watch and a variety of fitness bands.

“It is increasingly becoming more obvious that consumers are not willing to deal with technical pain points that have to date been associated with many wearable devices,” said IDC analyst Ryan Reith.

So-called basic wearables—including fitness bands and other devices that do not run third party applications—will make up the lion’s share of the market with some 80.7 million units shipped this year, according to IDC.

According to IDC, it seems that the short term does not promise the explosive growth of the previous year but that new generations of wearable technology, according to both IDC and Cientifica, offer considerable promise for the market.