Pillars of Life: Is There a Relationship between Lifestyle Factors and the Surface Characteristics of Dragonfly Wings?

ACS Omega
Samuel CheesemanElena P Ivanova

Abstract

Dragonfly wings are of great interest to researchers investigating biomimetic designs for antiwetting and antibacterial surfaces. The waxy epicuticular layer on the membrane of dragonfly wings possesses a unique surface nanoarchitecture that consists of irregular arrays of nanoscale pillars. This architecture confers superhydrophobic, self-cleaning, antiwetting, and antibiofouling behaviors. There is some evidence available that suggests that lifestyle factors may have influenced the evolution of the wing nanostructures and, therefore, the resulting properties of the wings; however, it appears that no systematic studies have been performed that have compared the wing surface features across a range of dragonfly species. Here, we provided a comparison of relevant wing surface characteristics, including chemical composition, wettability, and nanoarchitecture, of seven species of dragonfly from three families including Libellulidae, Aeshnidae, and Gomphidae. The characteristic nanopillar arrays were found to be present, and the chemical composition and the resultant wing surface superhydrophobicity were found to be well-conserved across all of the species studied. However, subtle differences were observed between the height, width...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Jul 8, 2019·ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering·Jafar HasanPrasad K D V Yarlagadda

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
scanning electron microscopy
electron beam lithography
Infrared Microspectroscopy

Software Mentioned

HLM
OPUS
SPSS
ImageJ
OriginPro

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