Abstract
Simulation of self-recovery and diversity of natural photonic crystal (PC) structures remain great challenges for artificial PC materials. Motivated by the dynamic characteristics of PC nanostructures, here, we present a new strategy for the design of hydrogel-based artificial PC materials with reversible interactions in the periodic nanostructures. The dynamic PC hydrogels, derived from self-assembled microgel colloidal crystals, were tactfully constructed by reversible crosslinking of adjacent microgels in the ordered structure via phenylboronate covalent chemistry. As proof of concept, three types of dynamic colloidal PC hydrogels with different structural colors were prepared. All the hydrogels showed perfect self-healing ability against physical damage. Moreover, dynamic crosslinking within the microgel crystals enabled shear-thinning injection of the PC hydrogels through a syringe (indicating injectability or printability), followed by rapid recovery of the structural colors. In short, in addition to the great significance in biomimicry of self-healing function of natural PC materials, our work provides a facile strategy for the construction of diversified artificial PC materials for different applications such as chem-/biosensing, counterfeit prevention, optical display, and energy conversion.
Highlights
Artificial photonic crystal (PC) materials mimicking the naturally occurring periodic nanostructures in creatures like a chameleon or a butterfly have attracted increasing interest [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was chosen because it could regulate the sizes of microgels [52], while AFPBA was selected and synthesized as it could reversibly interact with cis-diols (Figure S1) [48]
To achieve dynamic crosslinking in the microgel colloidal crystals, the resultant phenylboronic acid (PBA)-microgels were first coincubated with a glucose-derived glycomonomer 3-gluconamidopropyl methacrylamide (GAPMA, Figure S2) and a water-soluble photoinitiator (2-hydroxyethoxy)-2-methylpropiophenone
Summary
Artificial photonic crystal (PC) materials mimicking the naturally occurring periodic nanostructures in creatures like a chameleon or a butterfly have attracted increasing interest [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. The creatures can spontaneously heal from injury and recover their functionality to increase the survivability and lifetime The simulation of such self-healing property is of critical importance to the PC materials, since accidental cuts and scratches are inevitable during applications, which may deteriorate the performance of these materials. Artificial PC materials with diversified and complex nanostructures as well as self-recovery capability and mechanical durability are highly sought after
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