Butterfly Scale Transfer And Its Application In Synthesising Functional Materials

Biomaterials contribute to the diverse biological species in our world.With the help of modern characterization techniques, researchers discoveredthat biomaterials‘functions are not only the result of their chemicalcomponents but also due to the contribution of their microstructures. Thesestructures show the characters of multi-component, multi-scale and multi-dimension as well as complexity and intricacy. Therefore, biomaterials becomeone of the hot research areas and many accomplishment has been made in thepast decades.In recent years, because of their fine and complex structures, butterflywing scales become a hot topic in biomaterials. These structures show so manydesirable optical properties that they provide insights in the quest for newoptical materials and photonics information devices. However, some problemsstill remain concerning their realization in commercial application. One such question is how to effectively transfer large numbers of scales from wing todesired substrate in order to incorporate them into devices and keep them intactduring later process. In this paper, approaches are proposed to solve thisquestion by taking advantage of the fact that chemical bonds are stronger thanVan der Waals force and the fact that scales are asymmetric. With the help oflatex membrane which is viscous, large numbers of scales can be transferred.This newly made scale array is used to fabricate ZrO2nanomaterial andmacroscopic gold membrane. The main work are as follows:1. Due to their asymmetric structure, Sasakia charonda butterfly scalesare transferred onto silicon wafer. They are then dipped into gel and sinteredto fabricate considerable ZrO2materials. The mechanism of this transferprocess and the microstructure of replicated materials are characterized andanalyzed.2. Due to their different components, the overlaying Morpho menelausscales are separated by using latex membrane. These two kinds of scales arethen fixated onto quartz substrate by building up chemical bonds between them.This newly made scale array is used to fabricate macroscopic gold membranewith three dimensional structures. The mechanism of this transfer process andthe microstructure of replicated materials are characterized and analyzed.3. By stretching the latex membrane with Morpho scales attached, their structural color can be tuned. The application of this method in tuningstructural color is analyzed. The future applications of this scale array in multi-component vapor detection and thermal imaging are indicated.