Mankind discovered chitin in creatures over two centuries. Early studies by electron microscopy show that chitin exists as a hierarchical nanoscale fibrous phase in arthropod exoskeletons. The arrangement of the chitin nanofibrils into helicoidal ordered structures in the solid-state shells of several insects results in appearing the structural coloration particularly in beetle elytra and butterflies. The vision of the coloration in the creatures inspires scientists to develop biomimetic materials for photonic technologies. Chitin that is earth's most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose offers great opportunity for investigating sustainable chemistry for useful applications because of their unique properties such as toughness, high surface area, biocompatibility, and fascinating photonic properties. Finding new ordered chitin structures in biomass sources that allows for economically developing photonic materials at large scale is an interesting strategy for the design of new devices and catalysts. In this review, we summarized our recent work on the invention of the freestanding iridescent chiral nematic mesoporous chitin (or chitosan) nanofibril membranes obtained from the discarded seafood waste sources of the crustacean exoskeletons. We developed biomimetic templating routes that enable to transfer chirality into photonic mesoporous solid replicas. Bouligand-type mesoporous chitosan nanostructures were used as a chiral host to produce responsive photonic hydrogels and conducting composites. Liquid crystals of chitin nanorods prepared from sequential deacetylation and hydrolysis of the purified crustacean shells are used to template mesoporous inorganic solids or even convert to mesoporous N-doped carbon supercapacitors with nematic layered structure. Bringing the concept of sustainable chemistry into the photonic chiral structures, the future of these novel functional materials is certainly holding promise for creating new devices, catalysts, and investigating further templating to other materials.
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