Piszter Gábor, Kertész Krisztián, Bálint Zsolt, Biró László Péter
Institute of Technical Physics and Materials Science, Centre for Energy Research, H-1525 Budapest, P.O. Box 49, Hungary.
Hungarian Natural History Museum, H-1088 Budapest, Baross utca 13, Hungary.
Sensors (Basel). 2016 Sep 7;16(9):1446. doi: 10.3390/s16091446.
Photonic nanoarchitectures occurring in the scales of Blue butterflies are responsible for their vivid blue wing coloration. These nanoarchitectures are quasi-ordered nanocomposites which are constituted from a chitin matrix with embedded air holes. Therefore, they can act as chemically selective sensors due to their color changes when mixing volatile vapors in the surrounding atmosphere which condensate into the nanoarchitecture through capillary condensation. Using a home-built vapor-mixing setup, the spectral changes caused by the different air + vapor mixtures were efficiently characterized. It was found that the spectral shift is vapor-specific and proportional with the vapor concentration. We showed that the conformal modification of the scale surface by atomic layer deposition and by ethanol pretreatment can significantly alter the optical response and chemical selectivity, which points the way to the efficient production of sensor arrays based on the knowledge obtained through the investigation of modified butterfly wings.
蓝蝴蝶翅膀鳞片中出现的光子纳米结构造就了它们翅膀鲜艳的蓝色。这些纳米结构是准有序纳米复合材料，由含有嵌入式气孔的几丁质基质构成。因此，当周围大气中的挥发性蒸汽通过毛细凝聚作用凝结到纳米结构中时，由于颜色变化，它们可以充当化学选择性传感器。使用自制的蒸汽混合装置，有效地表征了由不同的空气 + 蒸汽混合物引起的光谱变化。发现光谱位移是蒸汽特异性的，并且与蒸汽浓度成正比。我们表明，通过原子层沉积和乙醇预处理对鳞片表面进行共形改性可以显著改变光学响应和化学选择性，这为基于通过对改性蝴蝶翅膀的研究获得的知识高效生产传感器阵列指明了方向。
