Ascendant Bioinspired Antireflective Materials: Opportunities and Challenges Coexist

Publication date: Available online 23 January 2019Source: Progress in Materials ScienceAuthor(s): Zhiwu Han, Zhibin Jiao, Shichao Niu, Luquan RenAbstractIn the past decades, antireflective (AR) materials have drawn more and more attention owing to its promising and wide applications such as photovoltaic industry, optical devices, and flexible display. However, there are also some critical challenges remaining. Fortunately, natural creatures have exhibited diversified well-organized micro/nanostructures and near-perfect functional materials, which provide design principles for development of the bioinspired materials. In terms of the advantages of biological strategies, the ascendant bioinspired AR materials with micro/nanostructure arrays have been developing rapidly, which can effectively suppress light reflection and improve light transmittance as well as absorption, determining the performances of related optical devices. This review highlights recent advances of the bioinspired AR materials. Firstly, the fundamental principles of achieving antireflection are briefly addressed. Next, some typical organisms with sophisticated AR nanostructures are described in detail. After that, recent progress in the optimized design and large area manufacturing is emphasized. Afterwards, the optical performance of the bioinspired AR materials with distinct pattern arrays are reviewed with particular emphasis on bioinspired nanostructure arrays. In addition, the advantages and disadvantag...

Source: Progress in Materials Science - January 23, 2019 Category: Materials Science Source Type: research