Biomimetic Coatings Capture Nature in Glass

fly eye in glass
The eye of a fruit fly is captured in glass. Image credit: R. Martin-Palma and the Penn State Materials Characterization Lab

Fragile objects such as butterfly wings and the multifaceted eye of a fruit fly have been captured in glass using a novel method developed at Penn State called conformal-evaporated-film-by-rotation (CEFR) technique. In CEFR, a coating material such as chalcogenide glass is heated in a vacuum chamber to form a vapor. The biological specimen is fixed on a holder at an oblique angle within the chamber and rotated every two seconds until a coating builds up to approximately 500 nanometers. The process takes only 10 minutes to complete and results in an exact duplicate of the original structure. Such biotemplates could be used to improve lenses, solar cells, sensors, and medical technologies.

Reporting their work in the online edition of Nanotechnology were lead author Raul Jose Martin-Palma, visiting professor of physics from the Autonomous University of Madrid; Akhlesh Lakhtakia, the Charles Godfrey Binder (Endowed) Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics; and Carlo G. Pantano, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering, and director of the Materials Research Institute. A provisional patent application has been filed for their work. Their research was supported by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia (Spain) and the National Science Foundation’s National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network at Penn State.

This article was featured in Focus on Materials - Winter 2009.