Laser-Induced Dewetting of Metal Thin Films for Template-Free Plasmonic Color Printing

Plasmonic color laser printing has several advantages over pigment-based technology, including the absence of ink and toner and the production of nonfading colors. However, the current printing method requires a template that should be prepared via nanofabrication processes, making it impractical for large-area color images. In this study, we show that laser-induced dewetting of metal thin films by a nanosecond pulsed laser can be effectively utilized for plasmonic color printing. Ag, Au, and their complex films deposited on a glass substrate were dewetted into different surface structures such as droplets, rods, and ripples, depending on the incident laser energy. The resulting morphological evolutions could be explained by Rayleigh and capillary instabilities. For a bimetallic film comprising Ag nanowires coated on a Au layer, a few different plasmonic colors were generated from a single sample simply by changing the laser fluence. This provides a possible method for implementing plasmonic color laser printing without using a prepatterned template.