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Floating solid-state thin films with dynamic structural colour

Nature Nanotechnology volume 16, pages 795–801 (2021)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 04 May 2022

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Abstract

Thin-film architectures are a staple in a wide range of technologies, such as semiconductor devices, optical coatings, magnetic recording, solar cells and batteries. Despite the industrial success of thin-film technology, mostly due to the easy fabrication and low cost, a fundamental drawback remains: it is challenging to alter the features of the film once fabricated. Here we report a methodology to modify the thickness and sequence of the innermost solid-state thin-film layers. We start with a thin-film stack of amorphous iron oxide and silver. By applying a suitable voltage bias and then reversing it, we can float the silver layer above or below the oxide layer by virtue of the migration of silver atoms. Scanning transmission electron microscopy reveals various sequences and thicknesses of the silver and oxide layers achieved with different experimental conditions. As a proof-of-principle, we show a dynamic change of structural colours of the stack derived from this process. Our results may offer opportunities to dynamically reconfigure thin-film-based functional nanodevices in situ.

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Fig. 1: Floating solid-state thin-film architecture.
Fig. 2: Reversible and dynamic multicolour tuning from a single floating thin-film device.
Fig. 3: Nanopixelled pattern on a FSTF.
Fig. 4: Large-scale colour images on a FSTF.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14060672. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

R.Z. acknowledges the support from National Key R&D Program of China 2018YFE0200200. C.-W.Q. acknowledges the support from the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore, under Competitive Research Program (Award NRF-CRP22-2019-0006). C.W.Q is also supported by the grant (R-261-518-004-720) from Advanced Research an Technology Innovation Center (ARTIC) and the grant (R-263-000-E55-305) from A*STAR under the Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering (AME) Individual Research Grant (IRG), under no. A2083c0060. We acknowledge the support from Park Systems Pte Ltd, C. Lee and S. R. Wang for assistance with the nanopixel imaging demonstration. We sincerely thank B. Tai., W. He. and L. B. Cheng for their useful discussion during the initial period of this work. We thank L. Song. for the discussion of device design, and Y. S. Tan for his kind assistance during the device fabrication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Product Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Singapore

    Zhiyuan Yan, Weikang Wu, Xinglong Ji, Yu Jiang, Chun Chia Tan, Chong Tow Chong & Rong Zhao

  2. Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), Singapore, Singapore

    Zheng Zhang & Le Yang

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Shang Sun & Cheng-Wei Qiu

  4. Center for Brain-Inspired Computing Research (CBICR), Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Rong Zhao

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  1. Zhiyuan Yan
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Contributions

R.Z., C.-W.Q. and Z.Y. conceived the idea. Z.Y. designed this work under the guidance of C.-W.Q., R.Z. and C.T.C. Z.Y. fabricated the devices and measured the optical spectra. Reflectivity simulations were conducted by Z.Y. and S.S. Park Systems Pte Ltd and Z.Y. performed the demonstration of nanopixel imaging. Z.Z. performed the XPS characterization and analysis. The microstructure characterization was conducted by Z.Y. with advice from X.J. W.W. did the density functional theory calculations. Z.Y., R.Z. and C.-W.Q. wrote the paper with inputs from all the co-authors. C.-W.Q. and R.Z. supervised the project. All the authors discussed the results and contributed to the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Chong Tow Chong, Cheng-Wei Qiu or Rong Zhao.

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Competing interests

The authors disclose a submitted patent application on a related structure altering of solid-sate thin films reported in this article, Singapore Patent application number 10201912602P filed in January 2020. The patent applicant is the Singapore University of Technology and Design. The inventors are Z.Y. and the co-authors R.Z. and X.J. All other authors declare no other competing interests.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–14 and Notes.

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Raw data of Fig. 2a, Fig. 2c, Fig. 2e, Fig. 2f and Fig. 2g

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Raw data of Fig. 4e.

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Yan, Z., Zhang, Z., Wu, W. et al. Floating solid-state thin films with dynamic structural colour. Nat. Nanotechnol. 16, 795–801 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-00883-7

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