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Structural colour printing using a magnetically tunable and lithographically fixable photonic crystal

Abstract

Many creatures in nature, such as butterflies and peacocks, display unique brilliant colours, known as ‘structural colours’, which result from the interaction of light with periodic nanostructures on their surfaces. Mimicking such nanostructures found in nature, however, requires state-of-the-art nanofabrication techniques that are slow, expensive and not scalable. Herein, we demonstrate high-resolution patterning of multiple structural colours within seconds, based on successive tuning and fixing of colour using a single material along with a maskless lithography system. We have invented a material called ‘M-Ink’, the colour of which is tunable by magnetically changing the periodicity of the nanostructure and fixable by photochemically immobilizing those structures in a polymer network. We also demonstrate a flexible photonic crystal for the realization of structural colour printing. The simple, controllable and scalable structural colour printing scheme presented may have a significant impact on colour production for general consumer goods.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the production of high-resolution multiple structural colours with a single material.
Figure 2: Generation of high-resolution multiple structural colour patterns using M-Ink.
Figure 3: Reflection intensity modulation and spatial colour mixing of structural colour.
Figure 4: Flexible photonic crystal thin film and optical properties of the structural colour.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partly supported by the System IC 2010 project of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Nano Systems Institute National Core Research Center (NSI-NCRC) programme of KOSEF. We thank S.E. Chung and N.R. Kim of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, SNU, for experimental advice. Y.Y. thanks the University of California, Riverside for provision of startup support, and also the Donors of the Petroleum Research Fund, administered by the American Chemical Society, for support of this research.

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H.K., Y.Y. and S.K. designed the experiment. H.K., J.G., J.K., S.-e.C., Hosuk L., Howon L. and W.P. performed the experiments and analysis.

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Correspondence to Sunghoon Kwon.

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Kim, H., Ge, J., Kim, J. et al. Structural colour printing using a magnetically tunable and lithographically fixable photonic crystal. Nature Photon 3, 534–540 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2009.141

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