Scattering and absorption from super-spherical nanoparticles: analysis and design for transparent displays

Transparent displays enabled by nanoparticle scattering have potentially attractive features, including simplicity, a wide viewing angle, scalability to a large size, and low cost. However, conventional nanoparticles made of noble metals require extreme geometrical dimensions to operate within the visible frequency range, making this intriguing setup unfeasible. Recently, to relax the realization constraints, the super-spherical geometry has been introduced. Exploiting this idea, we present the design of sub-pixels operating at the blue, green, and red wavelengths that can be used to make nanoparticle-based transparent displays feasible and practical. We describe the analytical design of the super-spherical nanoparticles through their polarizability and demonstrate its applicability to transparent screens. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America