Reproduction of the Morpho blue by nanocasting lithography

The Morpho butterfly's blue, which is a specific color produced by nanostructures, is expected to serve to various industrial applications such as posters, displays, cosmetics, etc. The natural Morpho blue has recently been emulated successfully by an artificial stepped nanostructure, but the fabrication of the nanostructure is too expensive using conventional lithography method. To solve the problem, nanocasting lithography (NCL) is newly, applied using UV curable polymer to replicate the stepped nanostructure and improve heat resistance for the following deposition process. After fabrication of the stepped polymer structure by NCL, TiO(2) and SiO(2) layers are deposited using the vacuum electron beam deposition and the Morpho blue structure is efficiently reproduced at low cost. The reflective characteristic of the reproduced structure is almost same as the natural Morpho blue. (c) 2006 American Vacuum Society.