Butterflies ~ Too Common Yet so Unique

Courtesy: Butterfly

Biological systems use nanometer-scale shapes to produce brilliant optical properties. Morpho Sulowiskyi butterfly uses multiple layers of cuticle and air to produce unique structure which produces high contrast color change with minimal wing movement. It has been observed that Morpho butterfly fine nano-engineered structure on the wing shows highly selective vapor response by changing the angle of the wing's intricate structure to the incident light. Nevertheless apart from the butterflies, eyes of a common household fly are now being used to study the anti-reflection properties exhibited by them. House hold flies eye is an excellent structure for filtering out UV rays. Moreover these common yet unique biological structures can be used in solar cell research in case we want to filter out specific range of wavelength but the fabrication issue remains questionable because nature is quite capable of producing intricate structures which are still beyond human knowledge. Nevertheless such structures might provide the inspiration for future technological applications.

Potyrailo et. al., “Morpho butterfly wing scales demonstrate highly selective vapor pressure response”, Nature photonics, 2007.

Huang et. al., “Bio-inspired fabrication of antireflection nanostructures by replicating fly eyes”, Nanotechnology, 2008.

Huang et. al., “Controlled replication of butterfly wings for achieving tunable photonic properties”, Nanoletters, 2006.