Photonic nanoarchitectures in butterflies and beetles: valuable sources for bioinspiration

Abstract

Nature began developing photonic nanoarchitectures millions of years before humankind. Often, in the living world, color is a communication channel that may influence the chance of the individual surviving as well as the chance to reproduce. Therefore, natural color-generating structures are highly optimized by many millennia of evolution. In this review, a survey is presented of the development of natural photonic crystal-type nanoarchitectures occurring in butterflies and beetles from the standpoint of physics and materials science, covering the past ten years. One-, two-, and three-dimensional structures are reviewed, emphasizing the role that disorder, or irregularity, may play in natural nanoarchitectures to achieve certain visual effects. The characterization, modeling methods, and rapidly growing number of bioinspired or biomimetic applications are discussed.

Tunable structural color in organisms and photonic materials for design of bioinspired materials

“…Potyrailo et al discovered that the nanostructure of Morpho butterfly wings indicates a high-performance optical gas sensor with a highly selective response [89]. The biomimetic approach is difficult, yet rather interesting for industrial applications, and the nanostructured organization of living creatures such as butterflies and beetles may open new approaches to the design of complex photonic functions [16,90].…”

“…Revealing their mechanisms may provide hints for the fabrication of new photonic materials with tunable structural color. Such bioinspired or biomimetic materials are a new trend and an emerging technology [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. This review is organized as follows.…”

It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature: Functional Materials in Insects

“…Anatomical allomone structures Bees, [486,491] wasps, [486] ants, [486] honeybees, [497] true bugs [473,499,607] Defense spines Lepidopteran caterpillars, [485] pine processionary caterpillars, [485,490] moths [486] Built structures Caterpillars, [608][609][610][611] moth caterpillars, [612] beetles [613][614][615] Projectile dispersal Bombardier beetles [467] Color vision and color manipulation 1D photonic structures Beetles, [289,291] butterflies [289,291] Apposition eyes Ants, [361] dragonflies [361] Bioluminescence Fireflies [616] Color vision Honeybees, [617,618] common bluebottle butterflies [619] Disorder-based color Butterflies, [320,323,324] jeweled beetles, [329][330][331] white beetles [332,333] Photonic crystals Weevils, [290,316,319,321] butterflies [290,316,…”

“…[275,276,287] In general, there are two main classes of animal coloration: pigmentary coloration due to the wavelength-selective light absorption by chemical dyes and structural coloration due to the interaction of incident light with ordered, quasi-ordered or disordered nanostructures causing interference. [277,288,289] Both coloration mechanisms feature unique optical properties that can combine in nontrivial ways and modulate optical properties with potential applications ranging from displays, to brilliant durable paints, to adaptive camouflage and transparent materials. [287,[290][291][292][293] Interferometric modulator displays are a low-power microelectromechanical display technology based on structural coloration, enabling full visibility in direct sunlight, unlike conventional liquid-crystal display screens.…”

“…[305][306][307] Simply speaking, the photonic structures in insects can be treated as periodic optical materials (so-called photonic crystals), and described using photophysical terminology. [289,301,308] Morphologies can be categorized by their translational periodicity as 1D, 2D, and 3D photonic crystals, where the structure is locally periodic in one, two, and three dimensions, respectively. Each different morphology changes the way light interacts with the structure, as do local defects and disorder.…”