Structural Color Patterns on Paper Fabricated by Inkjet Printer and Their Application in Anticounterfeiting

Inkjet-printed structural color patterns have attracted great attention in recent years because of their broadly promising applications. However, the patterns are usually fabricated on pretreated plastic substrates. Herein a convenient inkjet printing method was developed to fabricate large-scale computer-designed structural color patterns on photo paper without any treatment using inks containing monodisperse CdS spheres. By this strategy, not only were the single-color and multicolor structural color patterns on paper successfully obtained, but also invisible photonic anticounterfeiting was achieved without any external stimuli. The key point of this anticounterfeiting technique is printing patterns and the background with inks containing uniformed CdS spheres with different diameters but similar intrinsic colors, so that the invisible patterns can be observed clearly by simply changing the viewing angle. The invisible and visible can be realized without the change of intrinsic structure, and the patterns are all solids. The patterns will have long lifetime and good durability, which is beneficial for their practical usage.