Enlarged Color Gamut Representation Enabled by Transferable Silicon Nanowire Arrays on Metal-Insulator-Metal Films

Abstract

Artificial structural colors arising from nano-sized materials have drawn much attention because of ultrahigh resolution, durability, and versatile utilizations compared to conventional pigments and dyes. However, the limited color range with current approaches has interrupted the supply for upcoming structural colorimetric applications. Here, we suggest a strategy for the widening of the color gamut by linear combination of two different resonance modes originating from silicon nanowire arrays (Si NWAs) and metal-insulator-metal nanoresonators. The enlarged color gamut representations are simply demonstrated by transferring Si NWAs embedded in a flexible polymer layer without additional treatment/fabrication. Optical simulation is used to verify the additive creation of a new resonance dip, without disturbing the original mode, and provides "predictable" color reproduction. Furthermore, we prove that the proposed structures are applicable to well-known semiconductor materials for various flexible optical devices and other colorant applications.