6. Butterfly wing mimicry in solar cells
Living creatures have been manipulating light to create striking colors for millions of years. Blue Morpho rhetenor butterflies, in particular, are among the most investigated in the animal world for the properties of their iridescent wings.
In a nutshell, complex coloration arises because of diffraction from surface periodicities in the wing structures. These structures exhibit layers of alternately high and low refractive indices, leading to optical interference.
The laboratory of Professor Zhang Di at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has developed chemical replicas of these structures, with recent promising data demonstrating that they can be used as templates for more efficient dye-sensitized solar cells.
#Biomimetics #China #Japan #Korea #Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology #Materials Science #Nanyang Technological University #National Institute of Technology and Evaluation #National Tsing Hua University #National University of Singapore #Nature #Pohang University of Science and Technology #Shanghai Jiao Tong University #Singapore #Tokyo Institute of Technology #Video
