Colour printing at its best
Nature Nanotechnology
August 13, 2012
A method for printing colours at the highest possible resolution is reported in a paper published online this week in Nature Nanotechnology. The resolution of about 100,000 dots per inch could be useful for high-resolution printing for security purposes or for high-density optical data storage.
Joel Yang and co-workers demonstrate colours that arise from the light scattered back from silver nanodisks that are raised above a silver plane acting as a back-reflector. The diameter of the nanodisks and their separation encode for the reflected colour. An individual colour pixel shown in this work is made of a two-by-two array of these nanodisks. As a striking example for their technique, the team recreated the details and shades of the famous Lena test image.
The resolution achieved by the team surpasses that of earlier attempts by around 10 times thanks to directional back-reflection, as opposed to random scattering, exhibited by the disk-back-reflector nanoarchitecture, which supports plasmon resonances from silver.
doi: 10.1038/nnano.2012.128
Research highlights
-
Dec 23
Biomedical engineering: Tiny device goes with the (blood) flowNature Communications
-
Dec 18
Geology: Alpine summits may have been ice-free during life of Tyrolean IcemanScientific Reports
-
Nov 11
Technology: Slim display could enable holographic videos on mobile devicesNature Communications
-
Nov 10
Planetary science: Jupiter’s moon Europa may glow in the darkNature Astronomy
-
Nov 4
Materials: Making strong bio-based replacements for plasticsNature Communications
-
Nov 4
Biotechnology: ‘Porcupine’ system tags objects with DNANature Communications
