Struggling to decipher a smartphone screen in full sunlight could be a thing of the past thanks to a new antireflective coating inspired by moth eyes.
The coating is flexible and can be layered with additional coatings, including one that makes the surface self-cleaning — a particularly important function for touchscreens. The technology might also be useful for boosting the light absorbance of solar cells, says Shin-Tson Wu, a physicist at the Univ. of Central Florida.
Moth eyes have long served as inspiration for antireflective surfaces. The compound lenses on a moth’s eyes are covered in a layer of nanoscale domes, all smaller than the wavelength of visible light. These bumps make the surface antireflective over a broad range of wavelengths and at wide angles, which helps moths absorb more light at night and prevents the shine of their eyes from revealing their presence to predators. The problem, Wu says, is that the structures are so tiny that it is difficult to fabricate them across large areas, such as a tablet or phone...
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