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Orientation-Dependent Reflection of Structurally Coloured Butterflies
The photonic structures of butterfly wing scales are widely known to cause angle-dependent colours by light interference with nanostructures present in the wing scales. Here, we quantify the relevance of the horizontal alignment of the butterfly wing scales on the wing. The orientation-dependent ref...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148507/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32028633 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics5010005 |
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author | Zobl, Sigrid Wilts, Bodo D. Salvenmoser, Willi Pölt, Peter Gebeshuber, Ille C. Schwerte, Thorsten |
author_facet | Zobl, Sigrid Wilts, Bodo D. Salvenmoser, Willi Pölt, Peter Gebeshuber, Ille C. Schwerte, Thorsten |
author_sort | Zobl, Sigrid |
collection | PubMed |
description | The photonic structures of butterfly wing scales are widely known to cause angle-dependent colours by light interference with nanostructures present in the wing scales. Here, we quantify the relevance of the horizontal alignment of the butterfly wing scales on the wing. The orientation-dependent reflection was measured at four different azimuth angles, with a step size of 90°, for ten samples—two of different areas of the same species—of eight butterfly species of three subfamilies at constant angles of illumination and observation. For the observed species with varying optical structures, the wing typically exhibits higher orientation-dependent reflections than the individual scale. We find that the measured anisotropy is caused by the commonly observed grating structures that can be found on all butterfly wing scales, rather than the local photonic structures. Our results show that the technique employed here can be used to quickly evaluate the orientation-dependence of the reflection and hence provide important input for bio-inspired applications, e.g., to identify whether the respective structure is suitable as a template for nano-imprinting techniques. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7148507 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-71485072020-04-20 Orientation-Dependent Reflection of Structurally Coloured Butterflies Zobl, Sigrid Wilts, Bodo D. Salvenmoser, Willi Pölt, Peter Gebeshuber, Ille C. Schwerte, Thorsten Biomimetics (Basel) Article The photonic structures of butterfly wing scales are widely known to cause angle-dependent colours by light interference with nanostructures present in the wing scales. Here, we quantify the relevance of the horizontal alignment of the butterfly wing scales on the wing. The orientation-dependent reflection was measured at four different azimuth angles, with a step size of 90°, for ten samples—two of different areas of the same species—of eight butterfly species of three subfamilies at constant angles of illumination and observation. For the observed species with varying optical structures, the wing typically exhibits higher orientation-dependent reflections than the individual scale. We find that the measured anisotropy is caused by the commonly observed grating structures that can be found on all butterfly wing scales, rather than the local photonic structures. Our results show that the technique employed here can be used to quickly evaluate the orientation-dependence of the reflection and hence provide important input for bio-inspired applications, e.g., to identify whether the respective structure is suitable as a template for nano-imprinting techniques. MDPI 2020-02-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7148507/ /pubmed/32028633 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics5010005 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Zobl, Sigrid Wilts, Bodo D. Salvenmoser, Willi Pölt, Peter Gebeshuber, Ille C. Schwerte, Thorsten Orientation-Dependent Reflection of Structurally Coloured Butterflies |
title | Orientation-Dependent Reflection of Structurally Coloured Butterflies |
title_full | Orientation-Dependent Reflection of Structurally Coloured Butterflies |
title_fullStr | Orientation-Dependent Reflection of Structurally Coloured Butterflies |
title_full_unstemmed | Orientation-Dependent Reflection of Structurally Coloured Butterflies |
title_short | Orientation-Dependent Reflection of Structurally Coloured Butterflies |
title_sort | orientation-dependent reflection of structurally coloured butterflies |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7148507/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32028633 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics5010005 |
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