Abstract
High-quality elastomer-immobilized colloidal crystal films with low particle volume fractions demonstrated a full-colour change from red to blue with high uniformity, achieved by varying the mole fraction of monomers in the hydrogel or stretching.
Highlights
We demonstrate that elastomer-immobilized colloidal crystal films with a very low particle volume fraction exhibiting high optical qualities and high maximum strain can be achieved using gel-immobilized single-crystalline colloidal crystal films by the proper combination of the hydrogel and the elastomer
We succeeded in preparing elastomer-immobilized colloidal crystal films with high optical qualities and a low particle volume fraction, realizing the benefits of hydrogel-immobilized single-crystalline colloidal crystal films processed by shear flow
By the proper combination of the copolymer hydrogel consisting of NIPAM and NMAM monomers and the hydrophilic Hydrophilic 4hydroxybutyl acrylate (HBA) elastomer precursor, the shrinkage of the gel film during solvent replacement was suppressed; the high-quality colloidal crystals could be immobilized in solvent-free elastomer films intact
Summary
Periodic arrays of monodisperse colloidal particles, that is, colloidal crystals, embedded in a soft polymer, act as tunable photonic crystals.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] Because the volume of the soft polymer can be altered by external stimuli, the lattice constant of the colloidal crystals varies, and their optical properties can be tuned on demand. High-quality elastomer-immobilized colloidal crystal films with low particle volume fractions can be prepared using hydrogel-immobilized single-crystalline colloidal crystal films processed by shear flow. Owing to the low particle volume fraction, the elastomer film exhibited a colour change from red to blue upon stretching, and the maximum strain reached 120%.
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