Inspired by butterflies, scientists 3D printed colored nanostructures

Source: ETH Zurich

Cynandra opis butterflies are native to tropical Africa and their wings are brilliantly colored. These are produced by extremely complex regular surface structures in the wavelength range of visible light. By deflecting light, these structures can amplify or cancel out the individual color components of light.

Recently, researchers at ETH Zurich were inspired by this species to create color nanostructures through 3D printing technology. This principle can help make color screens in the future.

There are many examples of such structural shading in nature, including irregular surface structures. However, the regular nanostructures on the Cynandra opis wings are particularly well suited for reconstruction using 3D printing technology. The Cynandra opis structure consists of two mesh layers stacked vertically on top of each other, with lattice spacing of approximately 1/2 to 1 micron.

By varying this lattice spacing and lattice rod height in the range of 250 nanometers to 1.2 microns, the researchers produced 3D structures capable of generating all colors of the visible spectrum.

In addition, they produced a miniature image of a multitone structure measuring 2 x 2 microns. The researchers say that large-scale production of nanostructures is also conceivable. Because we can 3D print negative structures as templates, resulting in a large number of replicas. This means that the principle may be suitable for manufacturing high-resolution color displays, such as thin bendable screens.

In addition, the researchers also noted that nanostructured colors could replace pigments used in printing and painting today. Structural colors have certain advantages over conventional pigments: they last longer because they do not fade in light and are more environmentally friendly.

The research paper, titled "Replicating the Cynandra opis Butterfly's Structural Color for Bioinspired Bigrating Color Filters," has been published in Advanced Materials.

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Original text: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202109161

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