Scalable Nanostructured Silicon with All‐Dielectric Standard RGB Color

Abstract

Structural colors attract widespread attention in the fields of display and imaging devices due to their durable, vivid, and vibrant colors with subdiffraction resolution. Dielectrics with high refractive indices and negligible optical loss can achieve high‐quality structural colors that exceed the standard RGB (sRGB) color gamut. However, the fabrication processes are complicated and costly as well as limited in color‐printing areas. Herein, a facile strategy is developed to achieve scalable nanostructured silicon to enable various structural sRGB colors via a cost‐effective and straightforward wet‐chemical etching method. By adjusting the etching time, the nanostructured silicon can easily tune its color from ultraviolet to red, which occupies 60% of the sRGB color space. An optical simulation method uncovers the structure color generation mechanism, which indicates the structure color correlated with a random nanostructure reflection mode. In addition, different random‐shaped patterned displays are demonstrated on the nanostructured silicon with a centimeter‐sized substrate. This work provides a facile and efficient way to build structural color on all‐dielectric silicon substrates.