HOME | SEARCH | PACS & MSC | JOURNALS | ABOUT | CONTACT US Physics of structural colors This article has been downloaded from IOPscience. Please scroll down to see the full text article. 2008 Rep. Prog. Phys. 71 076401 (http://iopscience.iop.org/0034-4885/71/7/076401) The Table of Contents and more related content is available Download details: IP Address: 132.72.138.1 The article was downloaded on 02/07/2008 at 16:04 Please note that terms and conditions apply. IOP PUBLISHING REPORTS ON PROGRESS IN PHYSICS Rep. Prog. Phys. 71 (2008) 076401 (30pp) doi:10.1088/0034-4885/71/7/076401 Physics of structural colors S Kinoshita, S Yoshioka and J Miyazaki Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan E-mail:
[email protected] Received 3 September 2007, in final form 16 January 2008 Published 6 June 2008 Online at stacks.iop.org/RoPP/71/076401 Abstract In recent years, structural colors have attracted great attention in a wide variety of research fields. This is because they are originated from complex interaction between light and sophisticated nanostructures generated in the natural world. In addition, their inherent regular structures are one of the most conspicuous examples of non-equilibrium order formation. Structural colors are deeply connected with recent rapidly growing fields of photonics and have been extensively studied to clarify their peculiar optical phenomena. Their mechanisms are, in principle, of a purely physical origin, which differs considerably from the ordinary coloration mechanisms such as in pigments, dyes and metals, where the colors are produced by virtue of the energy consumption of light.