Engineering Commons^™

Replication Of Polypyrrole With Photonic Structures From Butterfly Wings As Biosensor, Jie Tang, Shenmin Zhu, Zhixin Chen, Chuanliang Feng, Yanjun Shen, Fan Yao, Di Zhang, Won-Jin Moon, Deok-Min Song

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Polypyrrole (PPy) with photonic crystal structures were synthesized from Morpho butterfly wings using a two-step templating process. In the first step photonic crystal SiO2 butterfly wings were synthesized from Morpho butterfly wings and in the second step the SiO2 butterfly wings were used as templates for the replication of PPy butterfly wings using an in situ polymerization method. The SiO2 templates were then removed from the PPy butterfly wings using a HF solution. The hierarchical structures down to the nanometer level, especially the photonic crystal structures, were retained in the final PPy replicas, as evidenced directly by field-emission scanning electron …