See-through displays are increasingly used in aviation and automotive applications, as well as in gaming and entertainment. The most common technology used to fabricate them relies on transparent organic light-emitting diodes, but cheaper and more scalable alternatives based on light-responsive elements dispersed in a glassy or polymeric matrix are being studied at present. Following the latter approach, Chia Wei Hsu and colleagues now realize a transparent screen that displays bright, blue images projected onto it from a commercial laser projector. In a polymeric film, the researchers embedded silver nanoparticles that have a localized surface plasmon resonance in the blue spectral range; the fabricated film therefore scatters this colour while being almost completely transparent in the remaining visible spectral range. The researchers suggest that dispersion in a single matrix of metallic nanoparticles with sharp plasmonic resonances tuned at different wavelengths will lead to the realization of multicoloured transparent displays.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Martiradonna, L. Plasmons on screen. Nature Mater 13, 223 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3904
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3904