Construction of photonic crystals with high color stability on white polyester fabrics

Abstract

The photonic crystals (PCs) self-assembled by colloidal microspheres interact with light, which can display bright structural colors. Structural color becomes a novel coloring technology for textiles. Normally, structural colors appearing on white polyester fabrics are affected by incoherently scattered light, resulting in low color saturation. This problem can be improved by PCs that were self-assembled from Polystyrene@Polydopamine (PS@PDA) colloidal microspheres with good monodispersity and sphericity. Benefitting from controllable particle size and absorbing incoherently scattered light, PS@PDA PCs can display multiple colors on white polyester fabric. To enhance the color stability of structural color fabrics, the synergistic adhesion effect between polydopamine (PDA) and the P(MMA-BA) colloidal particles at high-temperature melting was exploited. The results showed that the structural color on the white polyester fabric with high saturation and color stability was constructed.