While browsing Sciencedaily.com for quite some time, I came across a rather intriguing article in the chemistry section.The title of this article was “Miniature light-emitting devices and optical sensors: Pesky insects inspires practical technology” written by Raúl J. Martín-Palma, Amy E. Miller, Drew P. Pulsifer, and Aklesh Lakhtakia. Essentially, the scientists were inspired by a fly’s ability to survive through its impressionable eyes. Flies have eyes that consist of hundreds of optical units called ommatidia. These ommatidia’s allow flies to see within a 360-degree field of vision. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University decided to mimic these compound eyes and create miniature light-emitting devices and optical sensors. They planned to make some artificial, while using the structure to emit light in all directions. I find this idea very interesting because these scientists are using ideas from nature as inspirations in the science world. When the scientists were preforming the mimicking, there were some complications. The real issue was that the ommaditias' nanonipples extremely small size made calculations almost unmanageable, by its erratic scattering of light. Eventually they proposed to fabricate the actual device and see what would happen.
The researchers actually extracted corneas from blowflies and covered them with a fluorescent polymer. Then they proceeded by exposing it to an ultraviolet light by inducing the surface to just emit visible light. When they coated the eyes, they were able to have better light emission. Furthermore, this amplified emission means the pattern of the fly’s cornea could soon by modified into small light-emitting diodes and detectors. One of the concerns of the scientists was the mass harvesting of flies to create light sources. Due to this specific concern, the scientists have figured out a technique to mass-replicate bio templates at the nanoscale, including eyes of insects. The scientist’s next step is to try the coating procedure to other species’ compound eyes.
Submitted by Erica Schulz
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