High-throughput fabrication of polymethylmethacrylate nano-hole arrays for structural coloration using proton beam writing made diamond stamp

Abstract We demonstrate the fabrication of a diamond stamp through proton beam writing (PBW) coupled with reactive ion etching (RIE), and the process of corresponding thermal nano-imprinting to free-standing polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) film. Strong structural coloration from the imprinted nano-hole based PMMA patterns was observed. Additionally, we see that 8 nm Cr coating can enhance the structural coloration intensity of PMMA nano-hole. Furthermore, a series of Maxwell solver based finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations were performed to find out theoretical explanations to what we observed in the experiments. The simulation results are in a good agreement with the experimental observations in terms of structural color, color intensity contrast, and Cr coating enhancement. The dependence between the scattering cross section of elliptic nano-hole and polarization angle was discussed as well. This study provides an insight into rapid and high-throughput fabrication of polymer based structural coloration, thus paving the way to bring structural color printings into commercialization driven by large-scale industrial production.