Colors from correlated disordered photonic systems -- can we outperform nature?

Abstract

Living organisms have developed a wide range of appearances from iridescent to matt textures. Interestingly, angular independent structural colors, where isotropy in the scattering structure is present, only produce coloration in the blue wavelength region of the visible spectrum. One might, therefore, wonder if such observation is a limitation of the architecture of the palette of materials available in nature. Here, by exploiting numerical modeling, we discuss the origin of isotropic structural colors without restriction to a specific light scattering regime. We show that high color purity and color saturation cannot be reached in isotropic short-range order structures for red hues. This conclusion holds even in the case of advanced scatterer morphologies, such as core-shell particles or inverse photonic glasses - explaining recent experimental findings reporting very poor performances of visual appearance for such systems.

References in corpus (12)

• Biomimetic isotropic nanostructures for structural coloration
• Transport Phase Diagram and Anderson Localization in Hyperuniform Disordered Photonic Materials
• Absence of Red Structural Color in Photonic Glasses, Bird Feathers and Certain Beetles
• Dynamics of Anderson localization in open 3D media
• Colors from correlated disordered photonic systems -- can we outperform nature?
• Red light for Anderson localization
• Can 3D light localization be reached in "white paint"?
• Photonic glass for high contrast structural color
• Effects of multiple scattering on angle-independent structural color in disordered colloidal materials
• Resonant transport and near-field effects in photonic glasses
• Tunable high-index photonic glasses
• Complete photonic band gaps in 3D foams

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Angular Independent Photonic Pigments via the Controlled Micellization of Amphiphilic Bottlebrush Block Copolymers
• Light in correlated disordered media
• Colors from correlated disordered photonic systems -- can we outperform nature?
• Designing angle-independent structural colors using Monte Carlo simulations of multiple scattering
• Angular resolved light scattering from micron-sized colloidal assemblies
• Theoretic Guide for Using Photonic Glasses as Colored Covers for Solar Energy Harvesting
• 3D tomographic analysis of the order-disorder interplay in the Pachyrhynchus congestus mirabilis weevil
• Modeling Structural Colors from Disordered One-Component Colloidal Nanoparticle-based Supraballs using Combined Experimental and Simulation Techniques
• Global order parameters for particle distributions on the sphere
• Structural Color Production in Melanin-based Disordered Colloidal Nanoparticle Assemblies in Spherical Confinement