First post here - I’ve been experimenting with creating art by selectively anodizing titanium. Patterning anodized titanium isn’t new, but this process allows me to create full pictures, which I think is the first time this has ever been done.
This piece started off as a photo of a beach at sunset that I color mapped into the anodized Ti spectrum and printed.
Very similar! Both colors are formed by oxide layers on the surface, I think with stainless steel it’s a mixture of iron and chrome oxides. In the case of titanium there is only one oxide, TiO2, which is transparent crystal (in thin forms). The TiO2 layer is thin, on the order of hundreds of nanometers so the colors you see are a result of light waves constructively and destructively interacting with the transparent layer of TiO2 on the surface of the titanium sheet.