Complexity Digest 2006.51 - 16

22-Dec-2006

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Butterfly Wing Scales Provide Template For Complex Photonic Structures, Innovations-report Bookmark and Share

Excerpts: By replicating the complex micron- and nanometer-scale photonic structures that help give butterfly wings their color, researchers have demonstrated a new technique that uses biotemplates for fabricating nanoscale structures that could serve as optical waveguides, optical splitters and other building blocks of photonic integrated circuits.Using a low-temperature atomic layer deposition (ALD) process, materials scientists (...) produced aluminum oxide (alumina) replicas of wing scales from a Morpho peleides butterfly, a bright blue insect native to the rain forests (...). The artificial wing scales faithfully replicated the physical features and optical properties of the natural wing scales that served as templates. (...)