Light-Reflecting Coating Inspired by Butterfly Wings

Innovation: Industry

Cypris Materials, Inc.

2020

Image: David Clode / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Modify Light/Color

Color in living systems comes from pigments and the interaction of light with surfaces. Color serves many purposes for living systems, such as attracting prey or mates, providing warnings, or protecting through camouflage. To create the effects needed for each purpose, living systems must control the expression or visibility of pigments and the interactions (such as reflectance and refraction) of light. To do so, they have strategies that modify color or light to increase or decrease the color’s position, intensity, opacity, and more. Male hummingbirds, for example, have brightly colored feather patches on their throats; the coloring comes from pigments, structures that refract light, or a combination of the two. When a male hummingbird hovers near a potential mate, it modifies the angle of these feathers to create a bright, colorful display. However, when it needs to mute the colors to reduce conspicuousness, such as to avoid a predator, it modifies the angle again.

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True Blues

Explore resources for teaching about physical science and structural color using the story of how butterfly wings inspired paints without pigment.

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Cypris Materials creates structural color coatings that reflect UV and infrared light without toxic chemicals or dyes.

Benefits

Non-toxic
Reduced energy use
Reduced cost

Applications

Automotive
Construction
Consumer products

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 9: Industry Innovation & Infrastructure
Goal 11: Sustainable Cities & Communities
Goal 12: Responsible Production & Consumption

The Challenge

Coatings and color are restricted by aesthetics, ease of application, expense, range, and toxicity. Innovation in industries from various sectors like automotive, construction, and consumer products are all similarly limited by their surface chemistry. In industry, colors are typically produced by the inclusion of potentially toxic pigments, dyes, and binders within the coatings.

Innovation Details

Cypris Materials has developed a tunable structural color coatings made from commodity materials. When formulated and applied onto a surface, the coating self-assembles into a robust nanostructure that reflects UV, visible, and infrared light, eliminating the need for toxic pigments and dyes. The simplicity of this approach makes it possible to replace multimillion-dollar manufacturing equipment with a simple paint brush. These coatings are designed to replicate the naturally-occurring nanostructures that produce the brilliant colors observed in butterfly wings, peacock feathers, and opal gemstones.

Watch how Cypris Materials was inspired by butterfly wings to create a new type of paint.

Biological Model

Blue morpho butterflies do not use to create the bright blue color on their wings. Instead, their wings have a layered microstructure that causes light waves that hit the surface of the wing to diffract and interfere with each other, so that certain color wavelengths cancel each other out while others, namely blue, are intensified and reflected.

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Biological Strategy

Butterflies Hack Light Waves to Produce Brilliant Color

Morpho butterfly

Wings of morpho butterflies create color by causing light waves to diffract and interfere.

Ray of Hope Prize

The Ray of Hope Prize® celebrates nature-inspired solutions addressing the world’s biggest environmental and sustainability challenges. Created in honor of Ray C. Anderson, founder of Interface, Inc. and a business and sustainability leader, the $100,000 Ray of Hope Prize helps startups cross a critical threshold in becoming viable businesses by amplifying their stories and providing them with equity-free funding. The prize shines a light on the innovative, nature-inspired solutions that we need to build a sustainable and resilient world. Cypris Materials was selected as the Runner Up for the 2020 Ray of Hope Prize.

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