Ultralight Plasmonic Structural Color Paint

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lightweight, stable, and environmentally friendly structural color paint based on self-assembled plasmonic cavities, suitable for large-scale production and versatile applications.

Contribution

It presents a novel self-assembled plasmonic cavity design for angle- and polarization-independent structural colors, enabling scalable, environmentally friendly, and ultra-light paint production.

Findings

Achieved full coloration with a single layer of pigment

Produced the lightest paint in the world at 0.4 g/m2

Demonstrated large-scale fabrication of the paint

Abstract

All present commercial colors are based on pigments. While such traditional pigment-based colorants offer a commercial platform for large-volume and angle-insensitiveness, they are limited by their instability in the atmosphere, color fading, and severe environmental toxicity. Commercial exploitation of artificial structural coloration has fallen short due to the lack of design ideas and impractical nanofabrication techniques. Here, we present a self-assembled subwavelength plasmonic cavity that overcomes these challenges while offering a tailorable platform for rendering angle and polarization-independent vivid structural colors. Fabricated through large-scale techniques we produce stand-alone paints ready to be used on any substrate. The platform offers full coloration with a single layer of pigment, surface density of 0.4 g/m2, making it the lightest paint in the world.