Large-scale fabrication of three-dimensional ordered polymer films with strong structure colors and robust mechanical properties

Abstract

The self-assembly of colloidal spheres into ordered nanostructures is one of the most common methods of fabricating crystal films, but the resulting films usually have small areas, muted structural colors, and weak mechanical properties. This paper presents a simple method for the large-scale fabrication of polymer crystal films with vivid structural colors and robust mechanical properties. In this approach, when aqueous polymer colloids, colloidal silica particles, and a small quantity of carbon black are blended and then cast on substrates by the casting method to evaporate water, three-dimensional ordered structures are produced, directly forming large-scale polymer crystal films with intense and tunable structural colors and strong mechanical properties.