Abstract
The colour printing technology based on interactions between geometric structures and light has various advantages over the pigment-based colour technology in terms of nontoxicity and ultrasmall pixel size. The asymmetric Fabry–Perot (F–P) cavity absorber is the simplest light-interacting structure, which can easily represent and control the colour by the thickness of the dielectric layer. However, for practical applications, an advanced manufacturing technique for the simultaneous generation of multiple reflective colours is required. In this study, we demonstrate F–P cavity absorbers with micropixels by overcoming the difficulties of multi-level pattern fabrication using a nanoimprinting approach. Our asymmetric F–P cavity absorber exhibited a high absorption (approximately 99%) in a wide visible light range upon the incorporation of lossy metallic materials, yielding vivid colours. A high-resolution image of eight different reflective colours was obtained by a one-step process. This demonstrates the potential of this technology for device applications such as high-resolution colour displays and colour patterns used for security functions.
Highlights
The colour printing technology based on interactions between geometric structures and light has various advantages over the pigment-based colour technology in terms of nontoxicity and ultrasmall pixel size
This structure, formed by the simultaneous introduction of cavity layers having various thicknesses, exhibits different reflection colours depending on the thickness of the layers
To calculate the reflectance of the F–P cavity absorber with the porous Ag NC film, we used the full-wave finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method
Summary
The colour printing technology based on interactions between geometric structures and light has various advantages over the pigment-based colour technology in terms of nontoxicity and ultrasmall pixel size. Our asymmetric F–P cavity absorber exhibited a high absorption (approximately 99%) in a wide visible light range upon the incorporation of lossy metallic materials, yielding vivid colours. We fabricated highly integrated pixelated F–P resonance absorbers with eight different cavity layers by a one-step nanoimprint process. A silver nanocrystal (Ag NC) film was employed as the metallic top layer, owing to its high optical loss in the visible light range It could provide a relatively broad absorption band and better colour saturation and purity[32], desirable for colour printing applications. Through the combination of the lossy porous metallic film and systematically designed multi-level-thickness dielectric layer, a microscopic colour artwork could be produced with a high resolution. The reflective colour pixels based on a multi-stepped layer are promising for full-colour printing applications
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