Pretreated Butterfly Wings for Tuning the Selective Vapor Sensing.

Gábor Piszter,Krisztián Kertész,László Biró,Zsolt Bálint

doi:10.3390/s16091446

Gábor Piszter, Krisztián Kertész + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s16091446

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Abstract

Photonic nanoarchitectures occurring in the scales of Blue butterflies are responsible for their vivid blue wing coloration. These nanoarchitectures are quasi-ordered nanocomposites which are constituted from a chitin matrix with embedded air holes. Therefore, they can act as chemically selective sensors due to their color changes when mixing volatile vapors in the surrounding atmosphere which condensate into the nanoarchitecture through capillary condensation. Using a home-built vapor-mixing setup, the spectral changes caused by the different air + vapor mixtures were efficiently characterized. It was found that the spectral shift is vapor-specific and proportional with the vapor concentration. We showed that the conformal modification of the scale surface by atomic layer deposition and by ethanol pretreatment can significantly alter the optical response and chemical selectivity, which points the way to the efficient production of sensor arrays based on the knowledge obtained through the investigation of modified butterfly wings.

Highlights

Nowadays, monitoring the air quality of homes, work places, and industrial facilities is becoming more and more important
Sensors based on photonic crystal–type nanoarchitectures may offer an optimal solution to this problem due to the fast development of the response signal and relatively easy optical readout [1,2]
We showed in the case of nine closely related polyommatine butterfly species that their species-specific photonic nanoarchitectures showed the same characteristics and only minor differences were found, but these differences resulted in well-defined species-specific wing colorations [23]

Summary

Introduction

Nowadays, monitoring the air quality of homes, work places, and industrial facilities is becoming more and more important. For the efficient characterization of the ambient atmosphere, gas and vapor sensors are required which combine high sensitivity and chemically selective detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with low power consumption and fast response time, and operate in ambient air. Sensors based on photonic crystal–type nanoarchitectures may offer an optimal solution to this problem due to the fast development of the response signal (color change) and relatively easy optical readout [1,2]. Mankind discovered and first produced three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals almost 30 years ago [3], the low-cost and large-scale production of these intricate structures working in the visible spectrum has not yet been achieved. Nature produced photonic nanoarchitectures in the animal kingdom more than 500 million years ago [4]. The information obtained through these experiments can be used effectively to prepare “butterfly-based” bio-inspired photonic nanoarchitectures with desired optical properties that are compatible with the requirements of mass production

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