Highly anisotropic and stretchable birefringent elastomers for multicolored strain displays

Abstract

The birefringent response of elastomer materials with rich polarized interference colors is promising in the field of stretchable optical areas. Increasing the accessible change number of interference colors during stretching birefringent materials is important for optical strain display. Here, we can fabricate birefringent elastomers with multicolor response of polarized interference color via compositing with highly oriented cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), transparent one-dimensional biomass nanocrystals with excellent birefringent properties, which exhibit sensitive, reversible, and controllable changes of interference color during stretching in perpendicular to the orientation of the CNCs. Employing a layer-by-layer shearing process of CNC aqueous dispersion, solvent exchange of monomers, and in-situ polymerization, we can produce birefringent elastomers with high optical path difference (>1500 nm) due to the high birefringence (2.81 × 10−3) and high thickness (within 1 mm). In addition, the high retardation of the birefringent elastomers is conducive to more interference color changes when stretching perpendicularly to the direction of oriented CNCs. Then, we demonstrate this birefringent material capable of fabricating a polarized-optical strain display by utilizing the multicolored responses during the stretching process.