Expanding the plasmonic painter's palette

By blending paints in their palette, artists can create a broad spectrum of colors with subtly different hues. However, scientists who wish to create a similar range of structural colors, like those found on butterfly wings, are much more limited. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have developed a new method for mixing plasmonic red, blue and green to yield a virtually unlimited number of colors that could be used for new types of displays.