Butterfly wing crystals inspire new eco-friendly glitter
Popular Science...
In her 80 years on planet Earth, Dolly Parton objectively made the world a better place, and her legacy will only continue to improve lives. It’s difficult to summarize the many causes she championed throughout her career. Women’s and BIPOC equality, LGBTQ rights, and childhood literacy immediately come to mind—and not to be missed, Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza. But Parton was also a noted environmentalist, and even released a song about climate change in 2023.
She did it all with a bit of sparkle, and with that shine in mind, it’s difficult to envision a better way to honor her memory than with a new material currently in development at Northeastern University. As a team of chemists showcased at the American Chemical Society (ACS) fall meeting, the team is experimenting with manufacturing glittery, eco-friendly hues that retain their vibrancy far longer than standard materials. Their inspiration? Dolly Parton’s favorite animal emblem—butterflies.
Many molecules in nature absorb certain light wavelengths while reflecting others as visible color. The chlorophyll inside plants is responsible for their bright shades of green, while carotenoids in carrots produce their trademark orange. But over time, these colors often begin breaking down at a chemical level after prolonged exposure to environmental elements and sunlight.
Natural colors can also be created by a molecule’s crystalline structures. Instead of absorbing light, these arrangements bend and scatter wavelengths in ways that only allow certain hues to remain visible. Iridescent peacock feathers showcase these dynamics, as well as the thousands of butterflies that flutter throughout Dollywood every year. Unlike other pigments, structural colors maintain their vibrancy while also remaining incredibly durable.
“Because structural color arises from the physical architecture of the material rather than light absorption by a biomolecule, it does not fade over time,” Leila Deravi, a chemical engineer at Northeastern University, explained in a recent ACS profile.
Deravi’s team is focused on the Pieridae family of butterflies, which includes examples like the clouded sulfur (Colias philodice) and cabbage white (Pieris rapae). More specifically, they are studying the butterflies’ pterins, which are compounds associated with DNA and found on the surface of the insects’ wings. The researchers believe that pigment manufacturing could benefit from swapping out artificial—and frequently toxic—materials for varying sizes and densities of pterin crystals. While additional clinical testing is needed, it’s widely believed that natural pterins are non-toxic.
“They’re safe for the environment,” said Deravi. “They’re safe for people, and they don’t have a lot of downstream toxicity like some of the forever chemicals used in synthetic pigmentary dyes.”
However, creating pterins in a lab has traditionally required organic solvents like dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). In addition to taking weeks to finish, DMSO crystallization is also ecologically and medically harmful. This led chemist and Deravi’s colleague, Clara Dou, to a logical next question.
“If the animals can do this without DMSO, how can we replicate this natural process in the lab?” she asked.
Deravi, Dou, and their collaborators have since spent months developing a new method to quickly precipitate crystals from solutions with varying proportions of salt, water, and acids. Their results now safely create artificial pterin structures within minutes with far less need for organic solvents.
Currently, the novel method can only produce milligram-sized bits of color, and the team is investigating ways to scale the strategy. In the meantime, the breakthrough may offer immense ecological benefits, while on the road to becoming a more eco-friendly glitter. Thanks to its reliance on metals and toxic artificial elements, today’s decorative glitter is notoriously harmful for the environment and our bodies. These tiny, these butterfly-inspired alternatives could help phase out the shiny, pesky problem.
“If we can make some templates for glitter using essentially derivatives of DNA, that would be incredible,” said Deravi.
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