Plasmonics for Photorealistic

Printing and Beyond

Speaker: JOEL K.W.Yang
Writer: Sreetej Lakkam
Nano-plasmonics is a branch of material science devoted to optical phenomena
on the nanoscale in nanostructured metal systems. The recent developments in
nano-technology have revolutionized modern printing by using plasmonics.
Research into techniques with capability to make each nano structure stand
alone as a colour element may lead development of affordable high quality
printing and also pave path for other application of plasmonics and photonics in
general.
Plasmonics: Usage and Novelty
Professor Yangs group focuses on understanding the effect of photonics in high
quality image production. They principally try to understand the effect of stored
electric energy on reflectance of different materials. Nano antennae are used
generate frequencies as high as 100 THz to localizes the light intensity for
producing different absorption properties. Further using nano-protrusions of
varied shapes to produce different colour arrays is a worthwhile development.
The concept of varying the protrusion dimensions to produce bi-axial polarised
images using change in resonance fields will find application in numerous
fields. The quality of colours produced by plasmonic printing will replace
conventional colour printing techniques, owing to the ultra-high resolutions.
Extended Capabilities of Plasmonics
The usage of light as a medium of energy transfer leads to diverse applicability
of plasmonics. The capability to generate ultra-high resolutions of colours can
be effective utilized for creating colour displays in area of decreased visibilities,
like traffic signals. Further it can be applied in medical domain, by exploiting
the absorption of different materials properties. An issue concerning usage of
metal structures for light trapping and generation is their high level of
dissipative losses, which might hinder the performance[1]. This can be
overcome by usage of phase change materials as electric carrier can be a viable
area of research owing to the different scenarios it can be applied.

Plasmonics for Photorealistic

Printing and Beyond
Some interesting capabilities like printing at optical diffraction limits of existing
electron microscope and plasmonic micro-printing is quite fascinating. Further
using low cost materials like aluminium to produce high resolutions may lay
path to low cost techniques in this domain.
Future uses of Plasmonics
Plasmonics can be used for can be used for cryptography using colour coding
and bi-axial polarisation. The information can be effectively overlapped by a
high resolution buffer image and only a specific protrusion combination can be
used as a decoder of the encoded bi-axial polarised images. Owing to the nanoscale of the protrusion, brute force guessing of the protrusion dimension and
combinations will be virtually impossible.
Research orientation in the plasmonics may solve some of the issues pertaining
to optics and also may help in the development of lab on chip apparatus. The
initiation of plasmonic technologies has begun and they will replace the existing
technologies, making the work cycles more efficient.

Reference
1.

Boriskina, S.V., H. Ghasemi, and G. Chen, Plasmonic materials for energy: From
physics to applications. Materials Today, 2013. 16(10): p. 375-386.