Scalable Reflective Plasmonic Structural Colors from Nanoparticles and Cavity Resonances – the Cyan‐Magenta‐Yellow Approach

Abstract

the manifold advantages they have over pigmentary methods. Traditional modes of color generation are chemically unstable at high temperatures, subject to bleaching if exposed to intense UV illumination, difficult to dispose of or recycle due to toxic composition, and unsuitable for miniaturized imaging and display devices. [1] In favorable contrast to these methods, metasurfaces have shown to be more robust to chemical deterioration, [2] can deliver high spatial resolution [3] and are potentially more economical and sustainable while still rendering colors that are vibrant and aesthetically gratifying. [4,5] As synthetic composites, metasurfaces can assume a variety of configurations and consist of different combinations of materials such as metals and dielectrics in either nanostructured or thin film forms. The components are specifically selected to create a surface with desired properties. Metasurfaces can produce either transmissive or reflective colors, generated by dielectric components, [6] plasmonic metals, [7,8] or combinations of both. [9] In plasmonic metallic nanoparticles, resonant behavior occurs when incident photons excite surface plasmons at the metal-dielectric interface. This interaction leads to selective filtering of transmitted and reflected light. The strong field enhancement and subwavelength confinement characteristic of this phenomenon have led to the realization of several advancements in structural colors, [1,5] in particular with respect to the delicate balance between chromaticity and absolute reflectance across the visible. [10] In constructing metasurfaces for color generation, one prominently used geometry is the metal-insulator-metal (MIM) arrangement. In this tri-layer structure, thin metallic films make up the top and bottom layer, while a dielectric (insulator) material fills the central gap. [11][12][13][14] A simple approach is to only use multilayered thin films (1D systems) and Fabry-Pérot (FP) effects. [15] However, including lateral sub-wavelength patterns in the MIM system opens up many more possibilities to tune the structural colors by additional resonances determined by the shape and size of the individual elements. MIM structures with nanostructures on top and a very thin dielectric spacer (tens of nanometers) can exhibit so called gap surface plasmons (GSP). [16,17] The principle behind this physical phenomenon involves strong nearfield coupling between plasmon Plasmonic metasurfaces for color generation are emerging as important components for next generation display devices. Fabricating bright plasmonic colors economically and via easily scalable methods, however, remains difficult. Here, the authors demonstrate an efficient and scalable strategy based on colloidal lithography to fabricate silver-based reflective metal-insulatornanodisk plasmonic cavities that provide a cyan-magenta-yellow (CMY) color palette with high relative luminance. With the same basic structure, they exploit different mechanisms to efficiently produce a complete subtractive color palette. ...

A “layer-by-layer” building strategy for the fabrication of a metal–hydrogel–metallic nanoarray plasmonic cavity with dynamic color display performance

“…It has been reported that the plasmonic filed coupling of the MIM structure results from a combination of gapsurface plasmon resonance and Fabry-Perot-like resonance. [39][40][41] In such a MIMn plasmonic cavity, when the insulator thickness is very thin, gap-surface plasmon resonance is excited due to the strong near field coupling between the two metallic layers and the gap-surface plasmon resonance occupies an important position on the influence of the optical property. As the insulator thickness increases, near field coupling becomes weaker, leading to weakening of gap-surface plasmon resonance, and thus, the optical property is mainly dominated by Fabry-Perot-like resonance.…”

Recent progress on structural coloration

“…(a) Schematic of gap plasmonic structure based on aluminum nanorods (1), and achieving structural color pixels with a single nanostructure and black pixels by blending different nanostructures (2) [113] . (b) Process flow and structural schematic of large-scale preparation of Ag nanorod gap plasmonic structures using colloid lithography, along with samples and characteristics in CMY mode—cyan, magenta, and yellow (2) [114] .…”

“…Blake et al . designed a subtractive color reflection structural color based on the gap plasmon mode [114] . They utilized a hole-mask colloidal lithography (HCL) method to fabricate the top-layer nanodisk structures, achieving a large-area preparation process for reflective cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) structural colors, as illustrated in Fig.…”

Facile Fabrication of Titanium Nitride Nanoring Broad-Band Absorbers in the Visible to Near-Infrared by Shadow Sphere Lithography

“…On the other hand, colloidal lithography (CL) has been widely applied to prepare periodic two-dimensional nanosized patterns such as nanoholes, , nanodisks, and nanocones − on various substrates in a large area . Further complicated hierarchical nanostructures such as silicon nanorings and nanotowers were fabricated by using multiple patterning CL. , Previously, we fabricated TiN nanoring broad-band absorbers using multiple patterning CL .…”

“…16,17 Though TiN-based absorbers with various nanostructures such as nanohole, nanodisk, and nanoring have been fabricated, there is a limitation to fabricating these nanostructures in a large area due to electron beam lithography. 12,18−20 On the other hand, colloidal lithography (CL) has been widely applied to prepare periodic two-dimensional nanosized patterns such as nanoholes, 21,22 nanodisks, 23 and nanocones 24−26 on various substrates in a large area. 27 Further complicated hierarchical nanostructures such as silicon nanorings and nanotowers were fabricated by using multiple patterning CL.…”