Color Sensor Inspired By Octopus

Do you know that unlike the way we humans see colors around us, most of the animals do not see them ?
They have some features naturally adapted by their body to perform the task. Like, some see colors with the help of their skin. Confused ? Well I am talking about Octopus.

Colors are very important part of our environment which play a key role in beautifying things around us. No one ever thought that we could be able to detect colors with the help of skin also except the researchers from Rice University. 

The were inspired by the skin of cephalopods like octopus and squid. Cephalopods like octopus and squid are masters of camouflage, but they are also color-blind. They believe that these creatures can detect color directly through their skin. Although the way living organisms see colors is not that much compact and simple as it seems to be but still  they have developed something to detect the colors around us - Color Sensor.

Color Sensor  is basically a light detector that responds to red, green and blue light like the human eye does.

The sensor they have created uses complementary metal-oxide semi-conductor (C MOS) technology and can fit on a self contained chip. The main technology idea is being taken from the skin of the octopus.

The working of this sensor is being explained as :

• Conventional photo detectors convert light into electrical signals but have no inherent color-sensitivity. To capture color images, photo detector makers must add color filters that can separate a scene into red, green and blue color components. 
• It uses an aluminium grating that can be added to silicon photo detectors with the silicon microchip industry's mainstay technology, "complementary metal-oxide semiconductor," or C MOS. 
• Using electron-beam evaporation, which is a common technique in C MOS processing, Zheng deposited a thin layer of aluminium onto a silicon photo detector topped with an ultra-thin oxide coating. 
• Color selection is performed by utilizing interference effects between the plasmonic grating and the photo detector's surface. 

The device C MOS - compatible, bio-mimetic color photo detector was created at Rice University's Laboratory for Nanophotonics ( LANP ).

The sensor is a result of a $6 million research programme funded by the US Office of Naval Research.

Thus, the skin of octopus is proving itself to be a great idea for this technology in which the government is showing their keen interest.