Flexible, switchable and wearable image storage device based on light responsive textiles

Abstract

Materials with reversible optical properties under light irradiation have great potential application in various optoelectronic fields. Particularly, photochromic materials have received extensive attention in many fields. Herein, a novel composite photochromic fabric was fabricated via Layer-by-Layer self-assembling of phosphomolybdic acid (PMoA) and polyacrylamide (PAM). Based on the established electron transfer photochromic system, the dynamic manipulation of photochromic behavior of the cotton fabric was achieved with outstanding fine high-resolution image under the visible light irradiation. The prepared fabric can change from colorless to blue rapidly (within 5 min) under UV light and maintain excellent reusability photochromic performance after more than 20 reversible color changing cycles, implying its great potential applications in the field of intelligent devices and UV detection in sunlight. Moreover, we constructed fabric weaving and developed a Quick Response (QR) code security identification to prove the practical application of the prepared photochromic fabric in the fields of wearable, optical information storage and information security encryption.