Plasmonic Color Laser Printing inside Transparent Gold Nanodisk-Embedded Poly(dimethylsiloxane) Matrices

Plasmonic color generation from metal nanostructures has attracted intensive attention because of their excellence in achieving high spatial resolution, strong color contrast, and long-term durability. The limited area of plasmonic patterns anchored on substrates and produced by current top-down methods, however, severely restricts the advanced developments and potential applications in structural color display. Herein a robust method for realizing the laser printing of plasmonic colors inside transparent gold nanodisk-embedded poly(dimethylsiloxane) matrices is presented. It is found that various colors can not only be easily generated by embedding gold nanodisks of different sizes, but also finely varied by adjusting the laser pulse intensity during printing. It is further demonstrated that multiple color layers can be laser-printed at different depths. Stereoscopic images in the 3D matrices are laser-printed with sizes as large as 12 × 15 mm² and a resolution of 4600 dots per inch.