Solar energy harvesting through biomimicking the wings of a butterfly

The color of butterflies is mainly attributed to structural color as a result of diffraction of natural light. However, black color denotes trapping of sunlight within the butterfly scales. In some extreme cases, a butterfly will be rapidly de-iced through light-heat conversion within black scales on wings. Inspired by such a natural light harvesting process, scientists in the NANOMO unit carefully examined nanostructures of black scales obtained from different butterflies and assessed their light trapping abilities when placed on Si-based solar panels.