Reducing the Angle-Dependence of Light Emitted by Artificial Butterfly Wings (2015)

Undergraduates: Adam Kunesh, Cary Tippets

Faculty Advisor: Rene Lopez
Department: Physics & Astronomy

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The Amazonian Morpho butterfly, characterized by its vibrant, iridescent coloration, is a prime example of structural color found in nature. On the scales of each wing of the blue Morpho, many microscopic structures exhibit interference and diffraction, resulting in an emission of brilliant blue color. Though this color has been reproduced by man-made nanostructures, there has been difficulty in fabricating these structures over a large area. Further, the samples produced lack a wide range of viewing angles from which synthetic ¿¿¿wings¿¿¿ are observed to emit the desired color of light. To reduce this angle-dependence, a new method which randomizes the periodicity of the structures by writing each micro-line individually was implemented. In contrast to previous methods, in which the structures were formed using perfectly-periodic light interference patterns, we made use of a laser, an Arduino microcontroller, and a microstepper to ¿¿¿carve¿¿¿ the structures at random intervals. Initial data indicates that this method does reduce the angle-dependence of the samples. This method may help to enable the production of elastic ¿¿¿wings,¿¿¿ for which the emitted color could be actively manipulated based on the stress applied to the ¿¿¿wing.¿¿¿