Structural colour printing from a reusable generic nanosubstrate masked for the target image

Area of Science:

• Nanotechnology
• Optics
• Materials Science

Background:

• Traditional pigment printing faces limitations in cost and resolution for large-area images.
• Structural colour printing offers superior advantages but is hindered by high fabrication costs due to nanoscale patterning requirements for each image.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel, cost-effective strategy for printing structural colour images using a reusable nanosubstrate.
• To enable high-throughput production of structural colour images and explore applications in security features and data storage.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of a reusable nanosubstrate with arrays of nanostructures for red, green, blue, and infrared pixels.
• Utilizing a patterned mask layer with controllable apertures to select primary colours.
• Employing nanoimprint lithography with the masked nanosubstrate as a stamp to imprint images onto a separate substrate.
• Using laser lithography for mask patterning with submicron resolution.

Main Results:

• Demonstration of structural colour printing by mixing primary colours (red, green, blue) through controlled aperture sizes.
• Significant reduction in cost and complexity compared to traditional nanoscale patterning.
• Successful printing of multiple structural colour images, including those with embedded covert information.
• Detailed study of the optical properties of nanocone array grating pixels.

Conclusions:

• The reusable nanosubstrate strategy dramatically lowers the cost and complexity of structural colour image printing.
• This approach transitions printing from nanoscale patterning to high-throughput micro-patterning.
• The technology is suitable for personalized security features and data storage applications.