The 3D Butterfly Effect

The 3D Butterfly Effect

Author: David Bradley

The wings of the butterfly Callophrys rubi have served as a template for making 3D silica photonic crystals for non-linear optics applications.

Photonic crystals are usually two-dimensional and made using technology adopted from the semiconductor industry. However, nature’s 3D analogs of such crystals found in the pattern of scales on a butterfly’s wing, for instance, offer inspiration for making a whole new range of such structures synthetically.

This is the first example of an inorganic gyroid structure with a unit cell size of photonic length scale. Given its 3D and chiral nature, this structure opens up the possibility, not only of magneto-optic effects, but also of generating chiral metamaterials with yet unknown properties and applications.


Comments

  1. xiaoxue liu

    The 3 d Butterfly Effect? In say more specific? I’m a 3 d printer lovers, I need a lot of study and understand these knowledge, excellent knowledge of the world, if can, I will thank you very much!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Kindly review our community guidelines before leaving a comment.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *