Numerical Analysis for Structural Coloration of Multilayered Gratings with Non-ideal Multilayers

Abstract

This paper investigates structural coloration by a multilayered dielectric grating with non-ideal multilayers where the optical thickness of two media differ greatly. We formulate the matrix eigenvalues method to analyze the three-dimensional scattering problem of the structure for an unpolarized light incidence. Getting the specularly reflected diffraction efficiencies and transforming the efficiencies into the chromatic coordinates in standard RGB (sRGB) color space and the chromaticity coordinates, we numerically study the structural coloration. From the numerical results, we obtain the following characteristics of the structural coloration by the structure. The coloration requires a large number of layers to enforce interference reflection, vivid high-saturation structural coloration with a narrow reflection peak can be obtained, and periodic structure has a small effect on the structural coloration.