Novel optical applications inspired by the Morpho butterfly’s coloration: technology transfer from reflection to transmission

Abstract

Morpho butterfly’s blue is a famous example of structural colors but its mechanisms are exceptional, accompanied with a mystery. This color is created by interference from an ordered nanostructure, whereas the single color in wide angles contradicts the interference. This secret is attributed to a specific nanostructure having both order and disorder. After proof of this mechanism by artificial reproduction, we have found its wide potential applicability, and developed the fabrication technology in several directions. Moreover, converting this reflective principle to transmission, we have also found a possibility of new optical transmission devices with high transmittance, wide angular spread, low color dispersion, compactness, and controllability of light spread which have been impossible to meet simultaneously. Although our originally proposed nanostructure was difficult to fabricate, we have designed a feasible nanostructure to solve the problem. Finally, a Morpho-type window was successfully fabricated and verified, which can serve as a novel optical diffuser.

Tunable Structural Color with Gradient and Multiaxial Polydimethylsiloxane Wrinkling

“…Inspired by the abundance of structural color in nature, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] a range of material synthesis and processing approaches have been developed to design nano-and microstructures, including multilayer films, [8,9] photonic crystals, [10,11] and metasurfaces, [12,13] exhibiting static and variable structural colors, tailored to various practical applications. [14][15][16][17] Wrinkled surface structures, found in flowers and insects [18][19][20] have been shown to act as surface diffraction gratings, imparting structural color to flower petals such as in the queen of the night tulip [21] and the Hibiscus trionum, [22] as well as enhancing the diffuse reflection color modulation and directionality with gradient wrinkles (i.e., surfaces with spatially varying periodicity) and multi-axial (bidirectional and isotropic) patterns that can be readily fabricated.…”

Structure and Optical Anisotropy of Spider Scales and Silk: The Use of Chromaticity and Azimuth Colors to Optically Characterize Complex Biological Structures

“…Ordered nanostructures (such as grating patterns) produce small angle color changes (iridescence), whereas disordered nanostructures produce structural colors independent of the observation angle, similar to pigmented materials [ 18 ]. For the Morpho blue butterfly, its wide-angle color is attributed to a mixture of both ordered and disordered nanostructures in a hierarchical (multilayered) display [ 19 ].…”

“…Ordered nanostructures (such as grating patterns) produce small angle color changes (iridescence), whereas disordered nanostructures produce structural colors independent of the observation angle, similar to pigmented materials [18]. For the Morpho blue butterfly, its wide-angle color is attributed to a mixture of both ordered and disordered nanostructures in a hierarchical (multilayered) display [19]. The peacock spider has a distinct red pattern; its color is defined by the absorption of xanthommatin [20] contained within the brush-like structures, hence the coloration of a chemical origin (Figure 3a).…”

Multifaceted Structurally Coloured Materials: Diffraction and Total Internal Reflection (TIR) from Nanoscale Surface Wrinkling

“…During the past two decades or so, a range of bioinspired synthetic and processing strategies have been proposed to engineer structural colour on surfaces and bulk materials. These include multilayer film lamination [ 8 , 9 ], the assembly of photonic crystals [ 10 , 11 ] and metasurfaces [ 12 , 13 ], whose colour can be static or respond to external stimuli [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. Recently, novel structural coloured films and microscale concave interfaces based on total internal reflection (TIR) interference have also been reported, combining the effects of thin-film interference and TIR [ 18 , 19 , 20 ].…”