Morpho-blue reproduced by nanocasting lithography

摘要

The brilliant metallic blue in wings of Morpho butterflies has a mysterious feature. The blue luster is produced from the butterfly's scale, which does not contain a blue pigment at all. The origin of the coloration is then attributed to a microscopic structure that can also explain its high reflectivity. However, its optical characteristics on the scattered wavelength contradicts obviously the grating or multilayer, because it appears blue from wide angle. The mystery of the lack of multi-coloration has recently been explained using a model with a peculiar optical structure, and experimentally proven by fabricating the optical film by controlling the parameters in nanoscale. The reproduced Morpho-blue was found to be important from viewpoint of a wide variety of applications. However, the fabrication process of the nano-structure is too costly due to conventional lithography method. To solve the problem, nano-casting lithography (NCL) was newly applied using UV curable polymer to replicate the nanostructure and improve heat-resistance for the following process of deposition. After fabrication of the nano-patterned polymer structure by the NCL, TiO_2 and SiO_2 layers were deposited and the Morpho-blue structure was successfully replicated in low cost. The reflective characteristic of the replicated structure was found to reproduce the basic properties of the natural Morpho-blue, as well as the originally fabricated Morpho-blue.