Antireflection Property Of Ni-P Coating Assisted By Butterfly Wing And Cicada Wing Hierarchical Nanostructure

Surface reflection has long restricted Ni-P alloy to be used in theoptical antireflection applications. Recently, researchers have fabricatedantireflective Ni-P coatings by etching their surface into pits. However,those surface structures are always irregular and uncontrollable, making itdifficult to investigate the effect of surface structure on the antireflectionproperty of the Ni-P coatings. After eons of years’ evolution andelimination, nature has formed some regular antireflection structures. Byincorporating these structures into the Ni-P alloy, antireflective Ni-Pcompound structure can be achieved. Moreover, models of the structurecan be built to analyze the antireflection mechanism, which providestheoretical basis for designing more efficient antireflection material. In thisresearch work, inspired by nature, butterfly Papilio helenus, Ornithopterapriamus and Pomponia imperatoria cicada wing were respectively used asthe substrates of electroless plating to synthesize Ni-P composites withbiologically hierarchical nanostructures. The measured reflectance spectraof these synthesized samples show that the average reflectance of Ni-Pcoating deposited on the Ornithoptera priamus butterfly wing (O-DS_Ni-P)is about3%, which is25.7%lower than that of the one deposited on thePapilio helenus (P-DS_Ni-P) and89.7%lower than that of the onedeposited on the flat butterfly wing membrane (FM_Ni-P); The averagereflectance of Ni-P coating on the cicada wing with ordered nanopillarstructure is approximately5%, improving the antireflection performanceby70%.Based on the experimental data, the effect of the hierarchical nanostructure of butterfly and cicada wing on the antireflection property ofNi-P coating is investigated by using3D FDTD simulation. The simulationresults demonstrate that different parts of the structure play different rolesin the propagation of the incident light. Antireflection performance isascribed to the combination of multireflection, scattering and diffraction.This research work provides inspirations for designing more efficientantireflection materials.