Abstract
AbstractThe ability to manipulate light–matter interaction to tailor the scattering properties of materials is crucial to many aspects of everyday life, from paints to lighting, and to many fundamental concepts in disordered photonics. Light transport and scattering in a granular disordered medium are dictated by the spatial distribution (structure factor) and the scattering properties (form factor and refractive index) of its building blocks. As yet, however, the importance of anisotropy in such systems has not been considered. Here, a systematic numerical survey that disentangles and quantifies the role of different kinds and degrees of anisotropy in scattering optimization is reported. It is shown that ensembles of uncorrelated, anisotropic particles with nematic ordering enables to increase by 20% the reflectance of low‐refractive index media (n = 1.55), using only three‐quarters of material compared to their isotropic counterpart. Additionally, these systems exhibit a whiteness comparable to conventionally used high‐refractive index media, e.g., TiO2 (n = 2.60). Therefore, the findings not only provide an understanding of the role of anisotropy in scattering optimization, but they also showcase a novel strategy to replace inorganic white enhancers with sustainable and biocompatible products made of biopolymers.
Highlights
We study the effect of structural and single-particle anisotropy on the opacity of a material and identify the criteriaScattering optimization plays an important role in many aspects to improve scattering over a large parameter space, including of our daily life
To disentangle the role of structural and form anisotropy in the scattering efficiency, we first compare the effect of structural correlations on the optical properties of disordered systems consisting of isotropic particles
Our results show that using anisotropic particles aligned perpendicular to the exciting light (θ = σ = 0) increases the scattering efficiency of disordered systems, disregarding their structural correlations and refractive index
Summary
We study the effect of structural and single-particle anisotropy on the opacity of a material and identify the criteriaScattering optimization plays an important role in many aspects to improve scattering over a large parameter space, including of our daily life. By changing the degree and type of anisotropy for different size of the particles (r0, i.e., the radius of the isotropic object with equivalent area) and filling fraction (ff), we identified the set of structural and single-particle parameters that maximize the reflected intensity.
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