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Multiple scaled disorder in the photonic structure of Morpho rhetenor butterfly

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Abstract

The iridescence of Morpho rhetenor butterfly is known to result from a photonic structure on wing scales, where multilayer interference and grating diffraction occur simultaneously. We characterize the disorder at the photonic structure length scale and at the butterfly scale. We measure the scattering pattern of the wing. Through RCWA and 1st Born approximation models, we link the different disorders to different features in the scattering patterns.

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Acknowledgements

The study was partly supported by the EU through FP6 BIOPHOT (NEST/Pathfinder) 012915 project. Thanks to Emmanuel Maguet for his internship work on the characterization of the multi-scaled morphological disorders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. École des Hautes Etudes d’Ingénieur, 13 rue de Toul, 59046, Lille Cedex, France

    J. Boulenguez

  2. Institut des NanoSciences de Paris, (CNRS – Université Paris 6, UMR 7588), Université Paris Diderot, 140 Rue de Lourmel, 75015, Paris, France

    S. Berthier

  3. Centre Interdisciplinaire de Nanoscience de Marseille, Campus de Luminy – Case 913, 13288, Marseille Cedex 09, France

    F. Leroy

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  1. J. Boulenguez
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  2. S. Berthier
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  3. F. Leroy
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Correspondence to J. Boulenguez.

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Boulenguez, J., Berthier, S. & Leroy, F. Multiple scaled disorder in the photonic structure of Morpho rhetenor butterfly. Appl. Phys. A 106, 1005–1011 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-011-6728-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-011-6728-y

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