Thomas Fuhrmann of the University of Kassel in Germany has been looking at the micropatterning of diatom cell walls as possible photonic crystals and photonic lasers. In a previous post I ointed out one of Furhmann’s articles. This web page has a few nice visuals with proof that it is possible to dope the silica cell wall with laser dyes then excite them to emit particular color light with a laser. Furhmann is at the exciting stage of both cataloging the diversity of naturally occurring photonic waveguides and band gap materials in the diatom cell wall and exploring the flexibility of the system. Parts of this project are in what I have called the manipulative phase while some of the other research is in the investigative phase. Since diatoms are so easy to culture and so uniform in their properties I would be unsurprised to see this project make a serious leap towards commercialization in the next couple years

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