Design of a structure with low incident and viewing angle dependence inspired by Morpho butterflies

Wanlin Wang,Qinglei Liu,Jiajun Gu,Di Zhang,Tao Deng,Wang Zhang,Hai-Qing Lin

doi:10.1038/srep03427

Wanlin Wang, Qinglei Liu + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1038/srep03427

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Abstract

Morpho butterflies are well known for their brilliant iridescent colors, which arise from periodic arrays of scales. These brilliant colors have a low angle dependence, in contrast to similar phenomena that are commonly caused by the periodic structures. We designed a structure with a low incident and viewing angle dependence inspired by Morpho butterflies. This structure was studied using the finite-difference time-domain method. The lamellae distribution of tree-like structure was found to be the determining factor for producing a low incident angle dependence. Two advanced models were designed to produce a low viewing angle dependence. Model I was constructed using two layers of scales. The particle swarm optimization algorithm was used to construct Model II. The angle dependence of Model II exhibited a large viewing angle range under various incident angles.

Highlights

Morpho butterflies are well known for their brilliant iridescent colors, which arise from periodic arrays of scales
Several studies have been published on the broad angle dependence of the structural color of Morpho butterfly wings based on measurements[12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19] and theoretical analyses[19,20,21,22,23]
We studied the microstructure of Morpho scales using a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method

Summary

Introduction

Morpho butterflies are well known for their brilliant iridescent colors, which arise from periodic arrays of scales. We designed a structure with a low incident and viewing angle dependence inspired by Morpho butterflies. We designed a structure with a wide viewing angle range at large incident angles based on the structure of Morpho butterfly wings. The blue color of the wings of the Morpho butterfly is one of the examples of iridescent coloration with high reflectivity and low angle dependence. Grating and multilayer structures produce a high angle dependence, whereas the structural color in Morpho butterflies exhibits a much smaller angle dependence This low angle dependence is not observed in other manifestations of structural colors in nature such as soap bubbles, beetles[8,9] and birds’ feathers[10,11] which show rainbow-like, shimmering iridescence. The Morpho butterfly has already been studied and analyzed fairly intensively, it is necessary to simulate a more realistic model under various incident angles

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