Polarization-sensitive subtractive structural color used for information encoding and dynamic display

Structural color with polarization sensitivity has been widely studied due to its benefits for improving information storage and dynamic color display capacity. However, large amount and good concealment of information encoding are the major issues to be addressed. Here, we propose the elliptical Al/a-Si/Al (metal-insulator-metal, MIM) nanostructure arrays as the basic building blocks to realize polarization-sensitive subtractive structural colors for information encoding, and dynamic polarization-resolved displays. The experimentally realized structural color exhibits a wide color gamut covering the whole cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) color system, and presents a strong dependence on the incident polarization state due to its shape anisotropy. A new approach to improve the information encoding capacity is demonstrated using this structure combined with the polarization-independent nanostructures, increasing the concealment of information. Additionally, the polarization controllable dynamic display is engineered by the well-designed pixels with respect to different polarizations, generating the animation effect. These intrinsic properties and functionalities of the proposed structural color significantly extend its potential to the fields of information encoding, security encryption, and dynamic displays, not limited to color printing and filtering devices.