Printable structural color sheet without pigments or dyes

• Development product overview
• Application example
• Technology overview

Development product overview

The vivid colors of living creatures such as morpho butterflies and ball beetles are produced by a mechanism called structural color. Color is not produced by the absorption of light by the pigment, but by the diffraction and interference of light caused by regular structures with intervals comparable to the wavelength of the light. Our company has developed a sheet that uses structural colors as new coloring materials.

Conventionally, artificial structural color sheets have generally been multilayer films made by melt extrusion of resin, but this developed product can be printed on a plate, expanding the flexibility of applications and designs using structural colors. Masu. We aim to propose new possibilities and ways to utilize structural colors, and work with our customers to provide solutions in the packaging and optical-related markets.

Structure of structural color sheet

This developed product (particle laminated film)

Conventional product (multilayer film)

Manufacturing process of this developed product

Features of the developed product

1. Expressing vivid structural colors in thin films
   Provides excellent design as the visible color changes depending on the angle
2. Sharp reflection and transmission spectra
3. Wide substrate selectivity
4. Roll-to-Roll coating is possible on the entire surface.
5. Pattern formation by thermal printing is also possible.

Characteristics of the developed product

It is possible to selectively extract only specific wavelengths of incident light.

specular reflection spectrum

Diffuse transmission spectrum

Application example

It can be used for a variety of purposes regardless of field. (packages, decorative sheets, optical filters)
We support everyone's ``I want to use it in this kind of place''.

Technology overview

Monodisperse fine particle synthesis technology x periodic array technology

Materials that exhibit structural color are called photonic crystals, which have a nanoperiodic structure in which the refractive index changes at intervals comparable to the wavelength of light. When light enters photonic crystals, light diffraction and interference occur, resulting in distinctive colors and optical properties such as vivid colors and colors that change depending on the viewing angle.

Photonic crystals are classified into several types depending on their structure, but we focused on colloidal crystals, which have a structure in which fine particles are regularly arranged in three dimensions, because they offer a high degree of design freedom. This developed product utilizes our proprietary "monodisperse fine particle synthesis technology" and "periodic array technology" to create a printed structural color sheet.

Monodisperse fine particle synthesis technology

In order to develop vivid structural colors, it is necessary to control the particle size (particle diameter), which determines the color tone, and the variation in particle diameter (monodispersity), which determines the brightness.

Using our unique monodisperse fine particle synthesis technology, we create monodisperse particles with any particle size controlled in the range of 150 to 350 nm.

Periodic array technology

Using our unique periodic array technology, we have realized the technical challenge of regular arraying and immobilization of hard particles with poor adhesion.

The regular arrangement of particles creates a vivid structural color, which also improves substrate tracking.

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