Nature equals future, a solar butterfly.
In nature, there are over 100,000 species of butterflies, and we wrongly think that
this insect is very fragile.
Butterflies have adapted over millions of years to various climates and natural environments,
just like the morpho that lives in the Amazon.
The secret of its incredible blue color lies in the special structure of its wings.
This natural structure gives it many other properties which are studied by a recent
science, photonics.
Nature has been doing it for about 175 million years.
The idea behind it is to seek in nature structures that we are not yet able to make, but that
we could make in the future.
The morpho, like many other butterflies, has a multi-scale structure.
This is generally the characteristic of natural structures.
This butterfly's entire wing is structured in roughly five levels measured in centimeters.
On the wing, there are scales measured in 100 microns.
On these scales, there are streaks of microns.
On these streaks, there are slats of around 100 nanos, and that's where we enter photonics.
Below all that, there are large molecules, like pigments, chitin, melamine.
Two elements are necessary to create all this, air and chitin.
And in the air and chitin, there are four basic elements, which are always the same
ones, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and that's it.
And with all that, and because of its structure, we study optics, mechanics, thermodynamics.
The entire field of physics is studying virtually nothing at the cost of complexity.
If our temperature exceeds 40 degrees, we feel bad, but it's not fatal to us.
For these species, if their temperature exceeds 40 degrees because they have absorbed too
much, they do not have many solutions.
So they have developed a strategy thanks mainly to chitin.
As soon as it is too hot, it begins to emit an infrared more than any other element would,
and this is absolutely extraordinary.
As soon as the butterfly is very hot, it will begin to radiate infrared, and its temperature
will decrease.
And as soon as the temperature decreases, it will absorb again, and therefore its temperature
rises again.
It will manage to stabilize itself at around 40 degrees.
Here we have auto-stabilization, every engineer's dream.
We are now entering the energy transition phase, where we have to absorb more solar
energy.
Yet our current technology on solar panels cannot allow them to withstand very high temperatures.
So we are facing a similar issue that the butterflies have with photovoltaic and photothermal
energy.
For various reasons, the performance of photovoltaic cells, which is already not huge, will decrease
with increasing temperature.
One strategy would be to prevent overheating by, for example, beginning to radiate as soon
as a certain optimum temperature is reached.
Once the cells are cooled, their absorbing capacity increases in another temperature range.
Sensors should not stop at 40 degrees, of course, but the same process should occur at
100 or 200 degrees.
Morphos have many things to teach us on how to manage this alone without outside intervention.
We have found new strategy.
Regardless of the material or the structure, it is up to us to adapt the temperature of
the sensors.
The idea is here, there is the practical application, and there is the strategy.
The morpho, like other butterflies, has developed strategies with numerous applications.
For example, its color does not come from pigments, but from the diffraction of light
rays on its wings.
This allows us to consider new types of fabrics or screens which use less energy.
