The Anti-fog Structure Design And Mechanism Research Of Ephemeroptera Insect Compound Eyes

Glass and other transparent materials are widely used in the field of industrialand agricultural production, people’s daily lives, research and development, military,aviation and so on, but the atomization on its surface will greatly reduce thetransmission rate, it is very inconvenience for individuals to work and life. Moreover,fogging phenomenon occurring on the metal material surface will accelerate thecorrosion of the surface of the material, reducing its service life. Therefore, thedevelopment of a simple structure of anti-fog material to facilitate large-scaleproduction has become an urgent and important subject to the modern scholars.In this paper, the fog farm environment of compound eyes in anti-fogperformance test was analyzed, and the anti-fog test platform was designed andassembled. Then, the compound eyes of insects which were collected by lighttrapping and fishing nets and other fishing methods were tested by this test platform.By scanning electron microscopy and optical microscopy, microstructure ofcompound eyes was observed, and Ephemera pictiventris McLachlan compound eyeswho had a unique anti-fog performance and simple surface structure were selected forthe study.Through reading and sorting of the data about habits and growth characteristicsof Ephemera pictiventris McLachlan, to deter mine the belly color mayfly samplecollection methods, feeding device and feeding considerations be deter mined to. Byunderstanding the habits and growth characteristics of other insects near the waterenvironment to survive, and with reference to their the results of anti-fog propertiestest，the microstructure of lacewings, damselflies and mosquitoes compound eyeswere as a basis for mechanism comparison analysis. This is due to the livingenvironment and development of damselflies and mayflies were most similar. Butanti-fog properties of the compound eyes was not as obvious as Ephemera pictiventrisMcLachlan eyes, so it could be used to make the reverse mechanism analysis.Meanwhile, in order to exclude the impact of the compound eyes’ entire shape, thispaper introduced lacewings compound eyes who is most similar in the externalmorphology of the compound eyes, but different in sizes with damselflies. The article also selected Mosquito compound eyes with clear anti-fog effect thatwas reported as the analogy analysis. From SEM images and atomic force microscopyof the compound eyes of these types of insects could draw that their compound eyesare composed of numerous ommatidia who were at the micron level. The biggestdifference is that, ommatidia of damselflies and lacewings was six square convexshape on the side margins in the21-23μm, projection height in2-3μm and eachommatidium tightly arranged around six ommatidia, staying some gap is very small,but the ommatidia of mayflies and mosquitoes showed hemisphere shape, diametersof around25-30μm, a height of about12-15μm, and uniform located in surface oftheir compound eyes.Based on the Integration and analysis of information of micro-structure ofcompound eyes which we observed, the three-dimensional and two-dimensionalmodel of the structure of the compound eye were built by CATIA in this paper，andrevealed anti-fog mechanism of Ephemera pictiventris McLachlan compound eyes,referring to the three wettability theoretical models. That is, when we started spraying,the special structure of compound eyes made droplets form a layer of stable waterfilm on the surface. It is because of the presence of this layer of water film，dropletswill Spread out at breakneck speed on the surface, and will not appear fogging. Thenthis paper also used the contact angle measuring instrument to prove the existence ofwater film, thus, proved the correctness of the analysis of the compound eyes anti-fogmachine in this paper.Compared with the structure of the anti-fog material involved in the presentreport, the structure of Ephemera pictiventris McLachlan compound eyes is moresimple and larger in size. So, this study will provide new ideas to the design of simplestructure micron anti-fog function surface, and was expected to be applied incompound eye lenses, medical endoscope antifogging and reducing the liquid metalsurface rust and other fields, and will provide the more possibility for massproduction.