Ultra-antireflective synthetic brochosomes
Shikuan Yang, Nan Sun, Birgitt Boschitsch Stogin, Jing Wang, Yu Huang & Tak-Sing Wong
Nature Communications 8, Article number: 1285 (2017)
Download Citation
Received: 05 March 2017 Accepted: 14 September 2017
Published online: 03 November 2017
Abstract
Since the early discovery of the antireflection properties of insect compound eyes, new examples of natural antireflective coatings have been rare. Here, we report the fabrication and optical characterization of a biologically inspired antireflective surface that emulates the intricate surface architectures of leafhopper-produced brochosomes—soccer ball-like microscale granules with nanoscale indentations. Our method utilizes double-layer colloidal crystal templates in conjunction with site-specific electrochemical growth to create these structures, and is compatible with various materials including metals, metal oxides, and conductive polymers. These brochosome coatings (BCs) can be designed to exhibit strong omnidirectional antireflective performance of wavelengths from 250 to 2000 nm, comparable to the state-of-the-art antireflective coatings. Our results provide evidence for the use of brochosomes as a camouflage coating against predators of leafhoppers or their eggs. The discovery of the antireflective function of BCs may find applications in solar energy harvesting, imaging, and sensing devices.
Acknowledgements
We thank Josh Stapleton from Materials Characterization Laboratory and Leland Shawn Burghard at The Pennsylvania State University for the help with the optical measurements and the greenhouse management, respectively. We acknowledge funding support by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Award# D14AP00042 (materials and optical characterizations), the National Science Foundation CAREER Award# 1351462 (materials fabrication), Start-Up Fund from The Pennsylvania State University, and Wormley Family Early Career Professorship. Stogin acknowledges support from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (Grant No.: DGE1255832). Publication of this article was funded in part by The Pennsylvania State University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund. Part of the work was conducted at the Penn State node of the NSF-funded National Nanotechnology of Infrastructure Network.
Author information
Affiliations
Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
Shikuan Yang, Nan Sun, Birgitt Boschitsch Stogin, Jing Wang, Yu Huang & Tak-Sing Wong
Materials Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
Shikuan Yang, Nan Sun, Birgitt Boschitsch Stogin, Jing Wang, Yu Huang & Tak-Sing Wong
Institute for Composites Science Innovation, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China
Shikuan Yang
Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
Tak-Sing Wong
Contributions
S.Y. and T.-S.W. designed the experiments. S.Y. carried out the materials fabrication, wetting, and optical characterizations. S.Y., N.S., B.B.S., J.W., and Y.H. conducted the data analysis. N.S. and J.W. performed vision simulations of various organisms and experimental verifications. S.Y., B.B.S., and T.-S.W. wrote the paper. All authors contributed to paper revision.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Corresponding authors
Correspondence to Shikuan Yang or Tak-Sing Wong.
FREE PDF GRATIS: Nature Communications Sup. Info.
