Repository logo
 

The Structural Colors of Photonic Glasses

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Change log

Authors

Siedentop, L 
Meijer, JM 
Keim, P 
Aegerter, CM 

Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pThe color of materials usually originates from a combination of wavelength‐dependent absorption and scattering. Controlling the color without the use of absorbing dyes is of practical interest, not only because of undesired bleaching properties of dyes but also regarding minimization of environmental and health issues. Color control without dyes can be achieved by tuning the material's scattering properties in controlling size and spatial arrangement of scatterers. Herein, calibrated photonic glasses (PGs), which are isotropic materials made by random aggregation of nonabsorbing, monodisperse colloidal polystyrene spheres, are used to generate a wide spectral range of purely structural, angular‐independent colors. Experimental reflectance spectra for different sized spheres compare well with a recent theoretical model, which establishes the latter as a tool for color mapping in PGs. It allows to determine the range of visible colors accessible in PGs as function of size, packing fraction, and refractive index of scatterers. It also predicts color saturation on top of the white reflectance as function of the sample's optical thickness. Blue, green, and red are obtained even with low index, while saturated green, cyan, yellow, and magenta can be reached in higher index PGs over several orders of magnitude of sample thickness.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

color modeling, disordered photonics, gamut, isotropic structural colors, monodisperse colloidal glasses

Journal Title

Advanced Optical Materials

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2195-1071
2195-1071

Volume Title

7

Publisher

Wiley

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Grant Number: SFB1214 Swiss National Science Foundation. Grant Number: 200020M_162846 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation