A Plasmonic Painter’s Method of Color Mixing for a Continuous Red–Green–Blue Palette

Abstract

The ability of mixing colors with remarkable results had long been exclusive to the talents of master painters. By finely combining colors at different amounts on the palette intuitively, they obtain smooth gradients with any given color. Creating such smooth color variations through scattering by the structural patterning of a surface, as opposed to color pigments, has long remained a challenge. Here, we borrow from the painter's approach and demonstrate color mixing generated by an optical metasurface. We propose a singlelayer plasmonic color pixel and a method for nanophotonic structural color mixing based on the additive RGB color model. The color pixels consist of plasmonic nanorod arrays that generate vivid primary colors and enable independent control of color brightness without affecting chromaticity, by simply varying geometric in-plane parameters. By interleaving different nanorod arrays, we combine up to three primary colors on a single pixel. Based on this, two and three color mixing is demonstrated, enabling the continuous coverage of a plasmonic RGB color gamut and yielding a palette with a virtually unlimited number of colors. With this multi-resonant color pixel, we show the photorealistic printing Page 2 of 25 of color and monochrome images at the nanoscale, with ultra-smooth transitions in color and brightness. Our color mixing approach can be applied to a broad range of scatterer designs and materials, and has the potential to be used for multi-wavelength color filters and dynamic photorealistic displays.

Single pixel wide gamut dynamic color modulation based on graphene micromechanical system

“…Assuming standard illumination (CIE) D65 normally illuminate (white daylight) the proposed structure from the top, the generated colors can be characterized by the CIE XYZ color space with the tri-stimulus values given as [48][49][50][51].…”

“…According to the three modes of R, G and B presented by the photonic crystal microcavity transmission spectrum, if the relative intensities of the three modes are adjusted according to the human eye's perception for these three colors, the colors of CIE gamut can be continuously covered [48]. When we coupled five-layer graphene mechanical pixels with a diameter of 10 µm into the above three-mode photonic crystal microcavity, the microcavity greatly enhanced the interaction between light and graphene.…”

High‐Performance Transmission Structural Colors Generated by Hybrid Metal‐Dielectric Metasurfaces

“…Structural colors, deriving from the interference between light and structures, have been a scientific hotspot for advanced displays, high-end images, anti-counterfeiting technology, and data storage for several years. [1][2][3][4][5][6] With the development of nanofabrication technology, structural colors generated by plasmonic [1][2][3][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] or dielectric [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] metasurfaces exhibiting superior resolutions and high durability have been drawing tremendous interest in the visible spectra. Up to now, there have been wealthy studies on structural colors consisting of static colors [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] and tunable colors [22][23][24] in reflection mode with modulation of saturation, hue, and brightness.…”

Large plasmonic color metasurfaces fabricated by super resolution deep UV lithography

“…Instead, most studies are carried out using electron beam lithography to dene the structures. 11,12,[26][27][28][29][30][31] Although electron beam lithography is indeed suitable in terms of the required resolution, as it can easily produce structures with CD below 200 nm, the throughput of the technique is extremely low. Therefore, a different approach is required for producing large area plasmonic color surfaces.…”