Polymer opal with brilliant structural color under natural light and white environment
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The structural color films with enough brilliant color have attracted a special attention because of the great advantages in some practical application, which has currently become a research hot-spot. But their simple fabrication is still a great challenge. This study presents brilliant polymer opal structural color films (PSCFs) from polystyrene spheres under natural light by using a simple preparation and assembly strategy. In this strategy, the black organic dye water solution was used as the dispersion medium for polystyrene spheres, and then polystyrene spheres were rapidly fabricated to one ordered structures by the thermal assistance self-assembly method, which is cheap and commonly available. Contrast to other many structural color films irradiated by external light source under black background, the PSCFs exhibit brilliant and tunable structural colors under natural light even in a white environment, which is significant for the potential application of PSCFs in paint, photonic paper, external decoration of architectures, display, and bioassay.
I. INTRODUCTION
Contributing Editor: Winston Schoenfeld a) Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: [email protected] DOI: 10.1557/jmr.2015.238
sulfuric acid and silica particles into aqueous polymer colloids, and the large-scale polymer crystal films with intense structural colors and strong mechanical properties were obtained.33 However, the homogeneous dispersion of carbon black is still a great challenge due to large surface area and high surface energy of particles. Gu et al. fabricate monodisperse nigrosine-doped poly (methyl methacrylate-co-divinylbenzene-co-methacrylic acid) nanoparticles at boiling status and swelling process, the polymer crystal films have good color brilliant and uniform.34 But how to choose appropriate solvent is very important for avoiding to destroy the nanoparticle, at the same time, the scattering light from the surface of nanoparticle cannot be completely absorbed because the dye is in the interior of nanoparticle. In this study, we reported another more simple and convenient strategy to created polymer opal with brilliant structural color. In this strategy, one water-soluble black dye solution was used as the dispersion medium for polystyrene spheres (Figs. 1 and 2), and the polystyrene structural color films (PSCFs) can be rapidly fabricated by the thermal assistance self-assembly method on numerous soft or hard substrates (Fig. 3). The PSCFs are advantageous over previously reported materials because of their simple preparation and excellent color performances. The polystyrene emulsion containing black dye was easily obtained by simply mixing the polystyrene emulsion and dye solution. The scattering light and background light can be effectively absorbed because the water-soluble black dye molecules exited in the interstitial spaces between particles due to the
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Ó Materials Research Society 2015
Micro/Nanostructure plays important roles in living things.1–3 For example, the color of the butterfly wing originates from li
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