Shells of dead crabs could be used to make cheaper optical components

A team of scientists from Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines have managed to convert an extract from crab shells into a bioplastic that they say can be used to make optical parts known as diffraction gratings.

These are popular parts used in a wide variety of products; they essentially split light into several of its component colors in different directions, exploiting a well known property of light. They are commonly used in lasers, wavelength division multiplexing (a fundamental building block of modern telecommunications) and spectrometers.