High-speed laser writing of structural colors for full-color inkless printing

TL;DR

This paper presents a high-speed, full-color laser printing method using hybrid films that achieves a wide color gamut, high resolution, angle insensitivity, and durability, suitable for industrial applications.

Contribution

The authors develop an ultrafast laser process to produce stable, full-color structural colors with a large gamut and high resolution on hybrid films, overcoming previous limitations.

Findings

Achieved 90% sRGB color gamut with angle-insensitive colors.

Printing speed of 1.4 cm²/s with resolution over 25,000 dpi.

Demonstrated durability under various environmental tests.

Abstract

It is a formidable challenge to simultaneously achieve wide gamut, high resolution, high-speed while low-cost manufacturability, long-term stability, and viewing-angle independence in structural colors for practical applications. The conventional nanofabrication techniques fail to match the requirement in low-cost, large-scale and flexible manufacturing. Processing by ultrashort lasers can achieve extremely high throughput while suffering from a narrow gamut of 15% sRGB or angle-dependent colors. Here, we demonstrate an all-in-one solution for ultrafast laser-produced structural colors on ultrathin hybrid films that comprise an absorbent TiAlN layer coating on a metallic TiN layer. Under pulsed laser irradiation, the absorption behaviors of the TiAlN-TiN hybrid films are tailored by photothermal-induced oxidation on the topmost TiAlN. The oxidized films exhibit double-resonance absorption, which is attributed to the non-trivial phase shifts both at the oxide-TiAlN interface, and at the TiAlN-TiN interface. By varying the accumulated laser fluence to modulate the oxidation depth, an unprecedented large gamut of 90% sRGB is obtained. Our highly reproducible printing technique manifests angle-insensitive colors the variation of Hue is <0.14pi when viewing angles changing from 6 to 60. The full-color printing speed reaches to 1.4 cm2/s and the highest printing resolution exceeds 25000 dpi. The durability of the laser-printed colors is confirmed by fastness examination, including salt fog, double-85, light bleaching, and adhesion tests. These features render our technique to be competitive for high-throughput industrial applications.