The effects of coloured base fabric on electrochromic textile

Abstract

The colour of electrochromic fabric, and its colour transitions, was explored on the basis of variations in underlying fabric colour. A complete understanding of this phenomenon is essential for the fabric’s use in full-colour wearable displays or other applications. Previous work in this area utilised only white-coloured starting materials. Herein, a large colour swathe of fabrics was chosen. They were loaded with the commercially available conducting polymer, PEDOT-PSS, and were coated with an electrochromic polymer. These all-organic substrates were then switched between their two coloured states via reversible oxidation and reduction. At every stage, coordinates in the CIE Lu′v′ colour space were measured. It was found that darker colours decrease the overall contrast of the electrochromic, with black being entirely unobservable. More vibrant colours affected the observed colour through a subtractive mixing effect, as expected, but no adverse contrast effects between the two states of the electrochromic system was observed.