Microstructures and Optical Properties of Scales of Butterfly Wings

Tochihara, Hiroshi; Kumazawa, Kinya; Funakawa, Masami; Takimoto, Jun–ichi; Akimoto, Makio

doi:10.1007/s10043-996-0139-x

Cited by 53 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…However, the requirements for structural colors as display materials increased rapidly in the 1990s in various industries such as paint, automobile, textiles, and cosmetics, which has invoked the study of Morpho butterflies again from a physical standpoint. In this trend, Tabata et al [27] performed the chemical and optical analysis of the wing of M. sulkowskyi and M. adonis. They measured the angle-and wavelength-resolved reflectance of the wing, and analyzed the results by a multilayer interference theory.…”

Section: Historical Reviewmentioning

confidence: 98%

Structural Colors in Nature: The Role of Regularity and Irregularity in the Structure

2005

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Coloring in nature mostly comes from the inherent colors of materials, but it sometimes has a purely physical origin, such as diffraction or interference of light. The latter, called structural color or iridescence, has long been a problem of scientific interest. Recently, structural colors have attracted great interest because their applications have been rapidly progressing in many fields related to vision, such as the paint, automobile, cosmetics, and textile industries. As the research progresses, however, it has become clear that these colors are due to the presence of surprisingly minute microstructures, which are hardly attainable even by ultramodern nanotechnology. Fundamentally, most of the structural colors originate from basic optical processes represented by thin-film interference, multilayer interference, a diffraction grating effect, photonic crystals, light scattering, and so on. However, to enhance the perception of the eyes, natural creatures have produced various designs, in the course of evolution, to fulfill simultaneously high reflectivity in a specific wavelength range and the generation of diffusive light in a wide angular range. At a glance, these two characteristics seem to contradict each other in the usual optical sense, but these seemingly conflicting requirements are realized by combining appropriate amounts of regularity and irregularity of the structure. In this Review, we first explain the fundamental optical properties underlying the structural colors, and then survey these mysteries of nature from the viewpoint of regularity and irregularity of the structure. Finally, we propose a general principle of structural colors based on structural hierarchy and show their up-to-date applications.

show abstract

Section: Historical Reviewmentioning

confidence: 98%

Structural Colors in Nature: The Role of Regularity and Irregularity in the Structure

2005

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is commonly believed that the multilayer interference from the stack of lamellaes of regular periodic ridges on the scales ( Fig. 1(b)) is the origin of the blue iridescence of the Morpho butterflies [14][15][16]. Kinoshita et al explained the blue coloring of Morpho butterflies by the combination of interference and diffraction of light from ridges with irregular height differences in the sub-wavelength range in combination with pigmentation [17,18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical and experimental analysis of the structural pattern responsible for the iridescence of Morpho butterflies

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:Morpho butterflies are well-known for their iridescence originating from nanostructures in the scales of their wings. These optical active structures integrate three design principles leading to the wide angle reflection: alternating lamellae layers, "Christmas tree" like shape, and offsets between neighboring ridges. We study their individual effects rigorously by 2D FEM simulations of the nanostructures of the Morpho sulkowskyi butterfly and show how the reflection spectrum can be controlled by the design of the nanostructures. The width of the spectrum is broad (≈ 90 nm) for alternating lamellae layers (or "brunches") of the structure while the "Christmas tree" pattern together with a height offset between neighboring ridges reduces the directionality of the reflectance. Furthermore, we fabricated the simulated structures by e-beam lithography. The resulting samples mimicked all important optical features of the original Morpho butterfly scales and feature the intense blue iridescence with a wide angular range of reflection.

show abstract

“…Studies with electron microscopy have revealed that light interference at multiple thin layers is responsible for iridescences of most insects [Anderson and Richards 1942;Ghiradella 1991;Tabata et al 1996;Vukusic et al 2001b]. …”

Section: Microstructuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rendering biological iridescences with RGB-based renderers

Sun

2006

ACM Trans. Graph.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Brilliant iridescent colors occur on many biological objects. Current RGB-based graphics renderers are not sufficient to simulate such phenomena. This is because biological iridescences are caused by interference or diffraction, which requires wavelength information to describe. In this article, we propose an iridescent shading process that allows to render biological iridescences with RGB-based renderers. The key ideas are to construct spectra from colors and to use a wavelength-dependent model to describe iridescences. A novel model for iridescent illumination due to multilayer interference is developed based on analytic calculation and numerical simulation, and is simplified for practical rendering. The iridescent shading process is implemented using RenderMan embedded in Maya. Iridescent Morpho butterflies and ground beetles are rendered as examples to test the proposed techniques.

show abstract

Microstructures and Optical Properties of Scales of Butterfly Wings

Cited by 53 publications

References 5 publications

Structural Colors in Nature: The Role of Regularity and Irregularity in the Structure

Structural Colors in Nature: The Role of Regularity and Irregularity in the Structure

Theoretical and experimental analysis of the structural pattern responsible for the iridescence of Morpho butterflies

Rendering biological iridescences with RGB-based renderers

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About