Solution-Processable Nanocrystal-Based Broadband Fabry–Perot Absorber for Reflective Vivid Color Generation

Structural reflective colors based on Fabry-Perot (F-P) cavity resonances have attracted tremendous interest for diverse applications, such as color decoration and printing, display, and imaging devices. However, the asymmetric F-P cavity-based reflective colors proposed to date have low color purity and have difficulty to realize a desired vivid color because of a narrow absorption band characteristic in the visible light region. Here, a solution-processed, F-P ultra-broadband light absorber is newly proposed using a high lossy nanoporous material for vivid color generation. An asymmetric metal-insulator-metal structure consists of a high lossy nanoporous metallic film with coupled silver nanocrystals (Ag NCs) as the top layer. The absorbers not only increase the maximum absorption intensity up to ∼98% but also widen the bandwidth by 300 nm, resulting in high color purity in micrometer-scale pixels. Furthermore, the solution-based absorber shows potential to realize a high-resolution display pixel and anticounterfeiting devices having mechanical flexibility using the inkjet printing technology.