© Photo by Wayne Boo, U.S. Geological SurveyResearchers have demonstrated a new fabrication technique that allows them replicate the nanostructures found on cicada wings that make them water- and microbe-repellent.
The team used a simplified version of a fabrication process - called nanoimprinting lithography - to make a template of the complex pillar-shaped nanostructures on the wings of Neotibicen pruinosus, an annual cicada found in the central region of the United States. The templates are fully dissolvable and produce replicas that average 94.4% of the pillar height and 106% of the original wing, or master structure's pillar diameter, the researchers said.
The results of the study are published in the journal Nano Letters.
"We chose to work with wings of this species of cicada because our past work demonstrates how the complex nanostructures on their wings provide an outstanding ability to repel water. That is a highly desirable property that will be useful in many materials engineering applications, from aircraft wings to medical equipment," said Marianne Alleyne, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who co-led the study with Donald Cropek, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, and Nenad Miljkovic, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at Illinois.
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