IST Austria: Color effects from transparent 3D-printed nanostructures(ist.ac.at)
ist.ac.at
IST Austria: Color effects from transparent 3D-printed nanostructures
https://ist.ac.at/nc/news-media/news/news-detail/article/color-effects-from-transparent-3d-printed-nanostructures/6/
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New “direct laser writing” set-ups, however, cost about as
much as a high-quality industrial 3D printer, and allow for
printing at the scale of hundreds of nanometers (hundred
to thousand time thinner than a human hair), opening up
possibilities for scientists to experiment with structural
coloration.
Whenever I read stuff like this I wonder what impact on the design of every day object it will have. A lot of design already looks quite unachievable with technology from 50 years ago but this sounds like it could make a greater shift in that regard.
Could this technology have applications for display panels?
Two-photon lithography from Nanoscribe [2] is used to make the color-producing nanostructures. This method can make arbitrary 3D structures but currently has a ~100nm resolution limit and is slow---it's quite possible creating the paper's ~1 square mm teapot image took days. It's possible methods like nanoimprint lithography [3] could replicate a fabricated color patch over large areas.
[1] https://repository.ist.ac.at/1028/1/NanoStructColor-Auzinger... [2] https://www.nanoscribe.de/en/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoimprint_lithography