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 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.

Javier Sanchez-Mondragon (National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics, and Electronics (INAOE)), Debashis Chanda (NanoScience Technology Center, University of Central Florida, Department of Physics, University of Central Florida, and CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida)

Pablo Cencillo-Abad et al. ,Ultralight plasmonic structural color paint. Sci. Adv. 9, eadf7207 (2023). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adf7207