New Superomniphobic Glass Soars High on Butterfly Wings Using Machine Learning

Pitt Engineers Develop New Superclear, Supertransparent, Stain-Resistant, Anti-Fogging Nanostructured Glass Based on Butterfly Wing

Glass for technologies like displays, tablets, laptops, smartphones, and solar cells need to pass light through, but could benefit from a surface that repels water, dirt, oil, and other liquids. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh’ have created a nanostructure glass that takes inspiration from the wings of the glasswing butterfly to create a new type of glass that is not only very clear across a wide variety of wavelengths and angles, but is also antifogging.

The nanostructured glass has random nanostructures, like the glasswing butterfly wing, that are smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. This allows the glass to have a very high transparency of 99.5% when the random nanostructures are on both sides of the glass. This high transparency can reduce the brightness and power demands on displays that could extend battery life. The glass is antireflective across higher angles, improving viewing angles. The glass also has low haze, less than 0.1%, which results in very clear images and text.

Natural surfaces like lotus leaves, moth eyes, and butterfly wings display omniphobic properties that make them self-cleaning, bacterial-resistant and water-repellant—adaptations for survival that evolved over millions of years. Researchers have long sought inspiration from nature to replicate these properties in a synthetic material, and even to improve upon them. While the team could not rely on evolution to achieve these results, they instead utilized machine learning. They used Bayesian active learning for achieving this.

News Source: PITT