1. Butterfly wings inspire new research
Dr Smitha Vijayan
Associate Professor
School of Biosciences
MACFAST

2. What are
butterfly wings
made of?

3. A butterfly has four wings –
two on each side.
They are broken into two
forewings and two hindwings.
The wings are attached to the
second and third thoracic
segments (the meso- and
meta-thorax).
When a butterfly is in flight,
the wings move up and down
different shapes, colors,
textures, and patterns.

4. Butterfly patterns and colors : form of
camouflage or mimicry, and the fine scales
on the wings keep the insect insulated
during the cold months
The special shape of the wings and scales
gives butterflies their characteristic lofty
flight patterns and surprising aerial
maneuverability.
Butterfly wings also act as a kind of heat
sink which the insects uses to catch light and
warm its body.

5. Butterfly wings are
composed mainly of thin
layers of chitin, the same
substance in the
exoskeletons and hard
shells of insects and
arthropods.
On both sides of the wings
are overlapping layers of
tiny scales also made of
chitin.
The scales are responsible
for much of the wings’
interesting properties:
their color, iridescence,
and air flow around the
wing.

6. Scales often contain pigments, substances that
reflect a particular wavelengths of light
The concentration of the pigments is responsible
for the oranges, browns, and blacks, and whites
seen in butterfly wings.
Greens, blue, and reds are often not created by
pigments, but by the scattering of light by the
microscopic structure of the scale itself. The tiny
scales have microscopic ridges that scatter
incoming light, creating the shiny colors and
iridescence associated with butterfly wings.

7. Their wings contain evenly
spaced layers of the biopolymer
chitin that are separated by air.
These nanostructures
constructively reflect light to
create iridescent color Shiny
butterfly colors are both
beautiful and fascinating, but
did you know that some
butterflies have wings you can
see through?
These “glass” sections confuse
their predators while they fly.
This property is called optical
transparency, which means all
the light that goes into the wing
continues out the other side, just
like with real glass

8. • glasswing butterfly under
a scanning electron
microscope, you can see
a lot of randomly sized
nano-pillars. It is the
random size and shape of
the pillars that makes the
glasswing butterflies
transparent from any
direction

9. Butterflies have nanostructures for other purposes too, like making their
wings super water repellent and self-cleaning. Hydrophobicity is
important for butterfly wings because it allows them to weather a
rainstorm, where any moisture sticking to its wings could weigh down a
butterfly and make it difficult to fly

10. The nanostructures and
microstructures on a
butterfly wing make them
hydrophobic and self-
cleaning. Water droplets
sit on top of the butterfly
scale ridges, trapping
pockets of air underneath.
The water droplets don’t
enter the hydrophobic
pockets because the
interactions between water
molecules are stronger
than the interactions
between water and air

11. Air pockets have an internal pressure
that prevents water from permeating
through. The wings of the blue morpho
butterfly remove water even better than
lotus leaves. Blue morpho butterfly
wings have been shown to be some of the
most hydrophobic materials in nature.
To achieve super hydrophobicity, blue
morpho butterflies have microscale
ridges and veins that break a large drop
of water into smaller droplets. The
smaller droplets can leave the surface of
the butterfly wing more quickly

12. Butterfly wings also allow butterflies to sense
their natural environment.
Some butterflies can hear with their wings!
The thick veins on a wood nymph butterfly
wing can direct sound to the butterfly ear.
The veins are inflated with air, which creates
a gradient and may help the butterflies
access low frequencies of sound

13. Butterfly Colors:
Optical enhancement,
sensing, and the
power of invisibility

14. • The spectacular colors of butterfly
wings – like on the morpho butterfly
and the callophrys rubi butterfly are
not the product of pigmentation,
but of intricate nanostructures that
exhibit very high reflectivity in the
range of visible light.
• white sunlight hits the wing, but
only certain colors of visible light
are bounced back.
• Scientists and engineers can control
color and reflectivity by
manipulating the structure of matter
on the nano-scale.

15. Color-mixing phenomenon displayed by
Papilio palinurus butterfly wings
resulting from the concavities across the
surface of the wing scales.
(a) P. palinurus butterfly with a wingspan
of 100 mm
; (b) Scanning electron microscopy
(SEM) image showing the overlapping
roof tile pattern of scales on the butterfly
wing surface;
(c) Transmission electron microscopy
(TEM) image showing a cross section
through one concavity on a P. palinurus
butterfly scale and color-mixing
mechanism;
(d) Optical micrograph showing
repeated structures of lamellae and
reticulum forming
arrays to display colors . Scale bars: (b)
5 μm, (c) 1 μm, and (d) 10 μm.

16. By looking more closely at these scales, it can be
observed that
on a single wing, they are present in the thousands
and have dimensions of about 200 μm in length and
50 μm in width. The wings consist of two sets of
scales with an alternate row arrangement, a set of
long scales acting as covers,
which overlap and hide a set of shorter ground-level
scales. A raised grid of longitudinal quasi-parallel
ridges (lamellae) constituting the upper
surface of the scale run along its complete length with
a spacing of about 2.5 μm.
Fine tubes forming a net-like latticework (reticulum)
cover the spacing between two adjacent lamellae.
These lamellae and reticulum, forming arrays of
repeated structures, work together to
provide the observed characteristic colors of butterfly
wings.

17. Researchers from the Swinburne
University of Technology,
Australia developed artificial
materials with unique optical
properties based on the wings of
Green Hairstreak (Callophrys
rubi) butterfly.
With this new discovery, the
researchers report a technique
that could be used to make
screens on electronics more
brilliant.

18. Gyroids
The scales on the underside of
the Green Hairstreak’s wings
have an iridescent quality that
attracted the team to investigate
closely. Scanning electron
microscopy gave a high-
magnification view of gyroid
nanostructures. The structures
resemble a three-dimensional
lattice with regular,
geometrically symmetric
channels or pores. The unit cell,
the smallest repeatable portion of
the lattice, was between 310 and
350 nm, with features at 90 nm
in size.

19. Gyroid structures
• Gyroid structures within butterfly wings are chiral periodic
structures with a cubic symmetry
• They are the subject of rapidly increasing interest in photonics,
with applications from photonic crystals (PCs) and metamaterials
to optical materials with topological complexity owing to their
unique geometrical properties. The strong chirality phenomenon
of gyroid structures results in the ability to manipulate optical
circular dichroism and has even been used as a new miniature
chiral beam splitter.
• Gyroid structures have also been predicted to exhibit frequency-
isolated Weyl points with gapless surface dispersions and line
nodes like Dirac points in two-dimensional periodic systems.
• In addition, gyroid metamaterials made by metals or coated with
metals rather than dielectric materials are demonstrated to have a
wide variety of tunable nonlinear optical properties with ultrafast
response

20. Draw backs of natural gyroid
structure
different crystallite orientation
The presence of both left- and right-handed single gyroid
enantiomers
uncontrolled structure disorders
lacking significant circular dichroism

21. The mechanical
strength
property of the
fabricated
features was
characterized by
nanoindentation
with an atomic
force microscope
(NT-MDT;
NTEGRA
Spectra)
Experimental application of gyroid structures requires appropriate ways to
fabricate these three-dimensional (3D) complex nanostructures
Different fabrication techniques have been used to mimic the natural
structures with the same geometrical configuration but with a much larger
size scale than that found in nature
High resolution lithography
Multiphoton lithography
Optical two-beam super-resolution lithography
Can fabricate biomimetic photonic structures with superior resolution,
uniformity, and controllability.

22. special printing technique to create tiny structures
similar to those found in the wings of the
Callophrys Rubi butterfly, also known as the
Green Hairstreak.
In some iridescent butterfly wings, such as the
Green Hairstreak, the wing is made up of a
pattern of intertwining and curved surfaces,
known as a gyroid structure. This gyroid structure
has amazing properties when it comes to its
interactions with light.
The researchers used two-beams of light to print
at a super-resolution, creating gyroid structures
that are three-dimensional and mechanically
strong.
materials made from these artificial gyroids
should respond to light at ultrafast speeds
making them ideal for high-speed switches.
Has two significant advantages.
"The first is that it has improved resolution and
the second is that the materials fabricated with
this technique have better mechanical strength.
"These new gyroid structures could help make
more compact light-based electronics because,
thanks to their smaller size, larger numbers of
devices can be integrated onto a single chip.

23. Butterfly wings +
carbon nanotubes
= new
'nanobiocomposite'
material

25. • Leveraging the amazing natural properties of the
Morpho butterfly's wings, scientists have
developed a nanobiocomposite material that
shows promise for wearable electronic devices,
highly sensitive light sensors and sustainable
batteries

26. Eijiro Miyako and colleagues: Morpho butterfly wings
have natural properties that are beyond the capabilities
of any current technology to reproduce artificially.
lightweight, thin and flexible, the butterfly's wings
absorb solar energy, shed water quickly and are self-
cleaning.
Miyako's group had been working with tiny cylinders of
carbon termed carbon nanotubes (CNTs)
CNTs' unique electrical, mechanical, thermal and
optical properties.
Miyako's team made new hydrid materials with the the
wings and nanotubes

27. • Growing a honeycomb network of carbon nanotubes on
Morpho butterfly wings, creating a composite material that
could be activated with a laser.
• The resulting material heated up faster than the original
components by themselves, exhibited high electrical
conductivity and had the ability to copy DNA on its surface
without absorbing it.
• "Our present study highlights the important progress that
has been made toward the development of smart
nanobiomaterials for various applications such as digital
diagnosis, soft wearable electronic devices, photosensors,
and photovoltaic cells," the scientist's state.

28. Taking inspiration
from the rare
Peruvian butterfly
• Butterfly wings could be used to inspire
new technology in solar cells,
according to researchers at the
Australian National University (ANU)
who said that "filtering" light could be a
major feature of future solar projects.
• "scatter light to create a striking
blue iridescence”