LAUSR

Abstract We propose two designs of plasmonic enhancement using metamaterial nanograting (MNG) for color filters. MNGs are composed of metal–insulator–metal and metal-air–metal layers denoted as MNG-1 and MNG-2, respectively. MNGs exhibit polarization-dependent, high color purity, and wide color gamut characteristics. According to the surface plasmon (SP) theory, MNG-1 shows all colors filtering in the whole visible spectrum by changing the thickness of metal and insulator layers. While MNG-2 exhibits tunable color filtering characteristic by dynamically changing the distance between two metal layers. MNG-2 also exhibits tunable dual-resonance when exposed on the ambient with different refraction index. These high color purity and wide color gamut characteristics open the avenue of ultrahigh resolution imaging, visual anti-counterfeiting, and environmental sensing applications.