The butterfly wings inspire nanotechnologies of the barrier

TSmall’s science is a large company. Micropuces, medical devices and lasers have become smaller and smaller for decades. But they are still too bulky for a variety of advanced applications, such as brain-computer interface technology which can control nerve pulses using light or invisibility capes that can hide an object by modifying colors or patterns to match the environment. The new Nanotech designed by researchers in Australia could solve this problem, and their innovation was inspired by the iridescent blue of the striking wings of Morpho Butterfly.

While a student graduated from quantum optics at the Australian National University, Mudassar Nauman tripped on an article in which scientists have tried to imitate the nanostructure which gives the wings of morpho butterfly their intense blue color. They got closer, but could not completely recreate the dynamism of the butterfly in the scales of the artificial wing. Nauman has dug and found that an unusual two -layer system is what makes the wings burst.

The first layer is a transparent nanostructure on the butterfly wings which amplifies the reflected blue light to the eyes of an observer. The second layer is a dark melanin film below this first layer which absorbs parasitic light, sharpening the thoughtful blue. “All the light is not reflected cleanly,” explains Nauman. “Wandering colors and diffusion would normally wash the signal.”

Melanin sharpens the butterfly blue by swallowing the wandering light.

He wondered if he could use the logic behind the two -layer system of the morpho in his own work with non -linear perspective, where intense light interacts with the materials which transform a characteristic of incoming light compared to outgoing light. One of the objectives of non -linear optics is to modify the frequency of light – EG, transforming the red entering outgoing blue – an attractive property called frequency lining which can be useful in telecommunications devices, lasers, sensors and bioimperie. In microscopy, for example, the doubling of frequency can generate images with a clearer contrast than those generated by conventional microscopes. The doubling of frequency is also useful for generating a short light of short wavelength, such as green lasers, which are more visible to the human eye and give off less heat than red lasers.

Usually, large heavy crystals are needed to effectively facilitate this type of frequency change. But Nauman’s team has tried to effectively recreate the effect on the nanometric scale using human manufacturing materials called metasurfacces, ultra-receptor layers of nanostructures with smaller patterns than a wavelength that affects light in a way that few natural surfaces can.

Nauman wondered if he could use a two -layer system similar to that used by the morpho to improve the way in which these metasurfaces amplify light. He suspected that this could resolve a “fundamental limitation in the field”. The metasurface with which it works does not work normally in the visible light spectrum, because the quantum particles on which it leans to amplify the light, called excitons, absorb too strongly the wavelengths of visible light – in other words, they do not reflect this light. This means that Nauman metasurfaces cannot be used in applications, such as augmented reality or masking devices, in which the modification of human vision is a main objective.

In a first step, the research team created a metasurface version of the nanostructures found on the butterfly wings. With some adjustments of the geometry of the metasurface, scientists have created a nanostructure that could bounce the photons in a way that helps excitons to move from visible light to the absence of frequency and reflect it.

New technology could allow a night vision or augmented reality in contact lenses or glasses.

All of this must be done at specific frequencies in such a thin surface. “It is very complicated to design materials that align perfectly in frequency,” explains Giuseppe Strangi, expert in nanophotonic and metasurfacces at the Western Reserve University which was not involved in Nauman’s study. “They succeeded in that.”

The metasurface designed by Nauman and his colleagues does not work exactly like the butterfly wings, but it creates a similar effect. “Melanin sharpens blue butterfly by swallowing the wandering light. Our exciton sharpens the orange red by doing the opposite – it multiplies the light itself that it would normally absorb, “explains Nauman.

As a bonus, the new technology works at room temperature, which makes it more useful for applications of the real world. Similar work with excitons has been mainly reached at extremely low temperatures – generally below -240 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nauman adds that his team sought to make the new technology even more widely applicable by refining the metasurface in two distinct ways. First, they can turn on and deactivate the system by modifying the polarization of incoming light, or in the direction of its electric field, which can be easily controlled by a transparent plate called wave plate. Second, they can change the intensity of outgoing light using temperature as a gradator. Further on the ambient temperature of the air, the gradator of outgoing light. “This provides unprecedented control of light,” says Strangi.

All this manipulation is done on a metasurface a fraction of the width of human hair. It is so small that it could be incorporated into any transparent surface. The potential applications of the new metasurface are almost unlimited, explains Nauman. It could allow a night vision or augmented reality in contact lenses or glasses. On clothes, this could allow adaptive camouflage. It could even be used in medicine to create devices that can communicate with neurons. Strangi adds that an exciting potential use in the world of physics uses metasurface to code and transmit quantum information, allowing communication on quantum channels, a key characteristic of quantum computers.

These practical metasurface applications are not yet ready for prime time. It is difficult and expensive to make metasurfacces from the necessary materials – tungsten disulfur crystals, which consist of tungsten atoms geometrically taken into sandwich between two layers of sulfur atoms arranged in a similar way. And the scaling of such a small technology to a usable device would require a huge amount of them, says Strangi. Fortunately, other scientists study how to create the new surface more effectively, adds Nauman, so that these butterfly -inspired applications can take off in the near future.

Image of lead: Terii / Shutterstock

• Tyler Santora

  Published on September 26, 2025

  Tyler Santora is an independent science journalist, editor -in -chief and facts based on Colorado who wrote for Undark, American scientist, popular science, nature medicine, science, And more.