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The goal of this design project is to create an anti-reflective surface by mimicking the nanostructure of the Elephant Hawk-moth’s eyes.  This moth’s eyes feature conical protrusion that create the antireflective surface that is desirable for various electronic screens.  The nanostructure of the moth eyes will be replicated onto a material in order to achieve the same anti-reflective properties.



Nanostructure of the surface of the moth eye, showing the conical protrusions

With the tools available, it is impossible to recreate a material with conical protrusions at the nanoscale. The experiment will be preformed at the micron scale, to illustrate the effect that this type of surface has on reflectivity.  A model will be designed in Creo Parametric, and printed in three dimensions on the rapid prototyping machine.  The part that will be created will be a negative mold, which will then allow a material to be poured into the mold and cast into the correct structure.  Removing the mold will produce a material with the same structure as the surface of the moth eye, but 1000 times larger.