Butterfly scale morphogenesis: Wrinkling on the micron scale

Micron-scale surface modulations such as wrinkles or folds underly a number of modern engineering applications, such as photonic structures in photovoltaics and flexible metasurfaces. Controlled and precise fabrication of these modulations is a challenge for human manufacturing techniques. In stark contrast, biological systems robustly utilize morphological changes in their developmental program to create multi-germ bodies, hairs and scales on spatial scales which would be costly to replicate with human manufacturing. In this talk I will present recent measurements of in-vivo butterfly scale development exhibiting wrinkling. The observations are rationalized with a parsimonious continuum mechanics model.