Large Area Plasmonic Color Palettes with Expanded Gamut Using Colloidal Self-Assembly

Abstract

Optical resonances in metallic nanostructures are promising in enabling high-resolution plasmonic color prints, color filters, and in rendering colors for plastic consumer products. However, nanostructure patterning approaches have relied on charged-particle beam lithography, with limited throughput. For the purpose of visually evaluating colors spanning a large parameter space, it is important to develop a rapid and cost-effective approach to patterning large areas. The speed at which the parameter space is explored experimentally needs to be comparable to the time it takes to run full electromagnetic simulations. Here, we used a bottom-up approach to cost-effectively create periodic nanostructures on centimeter-scale samples. Upon further processing, this approach produced more complex geometries, such as rings and domes, compared to the standard structures consisting of metal disks. By adjusting various geometric parameters, vivid colors with an expanded gamut were obtained.

Engineering Light at the Nanoscale: Structural Color Filters and Broadband Perfect Absorbers

“…Instead of the multilayer thin‐film structures, different patterns with 2D and 3D geometric configurations can also be incorporated in a single unit, which can provide the possibility of realizing the broadband absorption characteristics for mass production. Benefiting from different advanced micro‐ and nano‐fabrication technologies increasingly emerged, numerous novel concepts with attractive features have been proposed and subsequently realized, opening up more opportunities for further advancement. We foresee a promising future for the artificial colors and broadband absorbers whose optical properties are determined by the structures, and many emerging applications.…”

“…Although various nanostructures described above were fabricated via top‐down nanofabrication techniques such as electron‐beam lithography, laser interference lithography, nanoimprinting lithography and focus ion beam technology, there have also been reports on achieving these schemes through bottom‐up nanofabrication approaches such as colloidal self‐assembly fabrication, metal dewetting method and electrochemistry technique . Such bottom‐up fabrication methods start from small building blocks such as atoms, molecules, nanoparticles and clusters, which can be assembled in a well‐arranged manner to build the nanostructures.…”

“…b) SEM and corresponding optical microscope images showing corresponding colors for a1) Al Dome‐Rings with ( P, R, r ) = (628, 250, 150 nm); a2) Disks with ( P, R, H ) = (420, 150, 60) nm; a3), Al Dome‐Rings with ( P, R, r ) = (520, 200, 100 nm); a4) Rings with ( P, R, r ) = (628, 200, 100) nm. Reproduced with permission . Copyright 2016, American Chemical Society.…”

Bright and Vivid Diffractive–Plasmonic Reflective Filters for Color Generation

“…[27][28][29][30] Despite various attempts to overcome these angle limitations, the obtained colors are still far from the standard color systems. 14,19,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] Here, we show how to combine two distinct physical effects to create narrow band reflection filters. Controlling both the first order diffraction and the surface plasmon resonance, we created nanopatterned surfaces which are able to reproduce bright and vivid structural colors along the whole visible spectrum.…”

All-Dielectric Metasurfaces Based on Cross-Shaped Resonators for Color Pixels with Extended Gamut

“…In recent years, many efforts have been done to study the aforementioned issue in plasmonic color printing. [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] Earlier, the most commonly used materials for plasmonic nanostructure based pixels have been gold and silver. 27,28 Gold has interband transition in the lower visible regime, 27 while silver is suitable for the entire visible range but is susceptible with the native oxide that spoils the stability of colors.…”