Template butterfly wings

The use of templates to control the porosity of solids is not limited to small organic molecules. Alternative templates include dendrimers [16, 17], polymers [18], hard templates such as nanoparticle colloidal suspensions [19] and latex spheres [20] or even biological materials like butterfly wings [21], DNA [22] or viruses [23]. 

Elastomer templates for nanoimprinting of the type devised by Kostovski et al. for their optical fiber nanoimprint lithography could be used to rapidly reproduce the butterfly wing nanostructures or those produced by reactive ion etching. This would further reduce production time and costs. Whatever means are employed to improve the production techniques for these butterfly and cicada wing substrates, it is clear that there is great potential for their application in biosensing. 

Zhang, W., Zhang, D., Fan, T., Ding, J., Gu, J., Guo, Q. and Ogawa, H. (2006) Biomimetic zinc oxide replica with structural color using butterfly (Ideopsis similis) wings as templates. Bioinspired Biomimcry, 1, 89-95. 

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