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A moth-eye bio-inspired approach to planar isotropic diffraction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Petros Ioannis Stavroulakis,
Stuart Boden and
Darren Bagnall
Petros Ioannis Stavroulakis
Affiliation:
pjs05r@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Stuart Boden
Affiliation:
sb1@ecs.soton.ac.uk, University of Southampton, Electronics and Computer Science, Southampton, United Kingdom
Darren Bagnall
Affiliation:
dmb@ecs.soton.ac.uk, University of Southampton, Electronics and Computer Science, Southampton, United Kingdom
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Abstract

A regular hexagonally packed biomimetic moth-eye antireflective surface acts as a diffraction grating at short wavelengths of the visible spectrum and shallow angles of incidence. These gratings display strong backscattered iridescence with 6-fold optical symmetry. The optical symmetry of real moth eyes is effectively infinite as nature utilizes large number of uniquely orientated domains. In this work we report on a biomimetic moth-eye surface created via nanosphere lithography with a very large distribution of close-packed tessellated domains and the resulting optical symmetry is compared to that of another widely known highly isotropic diffraction grating, also inspired by nature, the sunflower pattern. A white-light laser reflectometry system is used to measure and compare the diffraction pattern isotropy from both structures. The tessellated close-packed structure diffraction pattern approaches that of infinite optical symmetry even though the underlying pattern only possesses a six-fold symmetry. Hence, the angular isotropy observed for the sunflower pattern is replicated to a large extent via a self-assembly procedure, whilst circumventing the complicated design and manufacturing requirements of the sunflower pattern.

Keywords

self-assemblybiomimetic (assembly)optical properties

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References

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