Thermal-guided interfacial confinement to fabricate flexible structural color composites for durable applications

Abstract

Noniridescent structural colors generated by amorphous photonic structures (APSs) have attracted widespread attention owing to their consistency with people's visual perception. However, the point contact of building units causes poor mechanical properties, which hinders the application of APSs in the field of flexible materials. This work presents an innovative concept of thermal-guided interfacial confinement for fabricating flexible composites with noniridescent structural color patterns and strong mechanical properties. Based on the thermal machinability of the thermoplastic materials, hot pressing enabled the confinement of the APS layer between the integrated thermoplastic films. The obtained sandwich composites possessed evident structural colors, excellent mechanical strength and flexibility. The proposed strategy, which combines structural coloring with commercial thermoplastic materials to improve durability, paves a new way for commercialization of structural colors in various fields.