Technology
Bioinspired
Inspired by nature, we use the same striking structural colours as many plants and animals. The properties of our pigments make them the most sustainable while delivering on performance, colour and shine.
Sustainable
Performant
Our products have highly reflective photonic properties, exploited to reflect striking structural colours that are fade-resistant, usable in the same contexts as conventional pigments, glitters, and sequins.
How we replicate nature's colours
Sparxell’s technology is based on the latest material science innovation. As a spin-out from the University of Cambridge, our patented foundational research has been published in Nature Materials, where more information can be found.
1 Cellulose rich sources such as wood pulp provide the building blocks of Sparxell’s pigments and glitter. The core crystalline part of cellulose is extracted from these sources and dispersed into water randomly.
2 After prepping the cellulose crystals in water, they self assemble from a chaotic (isotropic) configuration into an ordered (cholesteric) state upon drying. Using our patented technology, the densely packed crystals now forms a film that reflects light and colour over a large area.
3 By controlling the interactions between the crystals, the cellulose film can be tailor-made to match a specific appearance. The film can then be ground and shaped into a range of sizes and forms—voilà! This is how we replicate nature’s most vibrant colours and effects.
A glimpse of our products
We can mimic the same blue shine of the fruit of Pollia condensata using the self-assembly properties of cellulose, and engineer it to achieve endless variations of other colours and effects. These are available in various sizes, from fine microscopic powders to glitters, sequins and films.
How it all started
Professor Silvia Vignolini, Sparxell’s Chief Scientific Advisor, first encountered the fruits of Polia condensata (pictured) in the collection of the British Museum. More than a century after they were first collected, their colours were as vibrant as the day they were picked.
It turns out that the colour vividness occurs because of the peculiar arrangement of the cellulose chains in the cell wall of the fruits, giving the fruit an intense structural colouration—one of the brightest colours of all biological materials.
Many brightly coloured plants and animals, including some birds,
butterflies, and beetles, evolved intricate and sometimes highly elaborate microscale arrangements to achieve striking colours and effects.
Dr Benjamin Droguet, Sparxell’s Founder & CEO, worked as part Professor Vignolini’s group at the University of Cambridge to demonstrate the use of industrial machinery to replicate the same vibrant colours found in nature using plant-based cellulose.
Sparxell was then born to provide nature’s most exquisite and sustainable colours at commercial scale.
Award-winning material science
Sparxell’s sustainable technology has received numerous awards and mentions.
