Structural Color Generation In Silicon Nanowires Enable Low-Cost Refractive Index Sensors

摘要

Tunable color generation from vertically arranged silicon nanowires is demonstrated. The generated colors are well understood using Bragg diffraction theory. In keeping with this, vivid colors spanning the entire visible range can be produced. By combining color generation from silicon nanowires, and the abitily for the human eye to resolve small color changes, a refractive index can be realized. An index resolution of 10~-4 is achieved by performing a simple RGB trichromatic decomposition on the collected images.