The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded General Electric‘s [GE] Global Research Center a four-year, $6.3 million grant to develop bio-inspired nanostructure sensors that would enable faster, more selective detection of dangerous warfare agents and explosives. The award is based on work that GE scientists began three years ago through their discovery that nanostructures from wing scales of butterflies exhibited acute chemical sensing properties. Since then, the scientists have been developing a new sensing platform that replicates these unique properties. The DARPA award supports further research. Radislav Potyrailo, principal investigator at GE, says the sensors can be made in very small sizes with low production costs. In addition to security applications, the sensors could be used in various industrial and healthcare applications, he says. “DARPA’s goal in this program is to harness the best of nature’s own photonic structures and use advances in materials technology to create controllable photonic devices at visible and near-infrared wavelengths,” says Viktoria Greanya, DARPA’s program manager.