Scalable active plasmonic nano-pixels

Abstract

Combining plasmonic nano-dimers with responsive polymers delivers extremely small active pixels, which not only show vivid nonfading colour dynamics in response to external stimuli, but are also scalable from the single nanoparticle level to multi-centimetre scale films [1]. Here we present colour-changing plasmonic metasurfaces constructed using a ‘lithography-free’ bottom-up solution process that controls the crucial plasmonic gaps and fills them with an active medium. Thermochromic or electrochromic nanoparticles are coated onto a metallic mirror, providing the smallest-area active plasmonic pixels to date. [1-2] We demonstrate how these nano-pixels show strong scattering colours, and are thermally or electrically tunable across >100 nm wavelength ranges (Fig. 1). We further show that these dynamics can be scalable to large scale flexible films and thus promise great potential for large-scale roll-to-roll manufacturing at industrial levels of active plasmonic colouration with ultralow energies. [3-4]

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