Electrochromic fabrics with improved cycling stability via modified polyaniline towards environmentally adaptive camouflage

Abstract

Electrochromic (EC) fabrics based on conductive polyaniline (PANI) have demonstrated important application potential in the field of active camouflage due to their ability to reversibly switch color between yellow and green, while their practical applications are greatly limited by their poor cycling performance. Here, a modified EC PANI is developed to achieve long-term stable optical modulation through well-designed anion doping, which optimizes the energy levels and also the microstructures. The modified PANI exhibits an improved cycling performance and could achieve a high optical retention rate of 78% even after 6500 cycles and much higher than that of pristine PANI (6.7%). Also, the EC fabric equipped with modified PANI exhibits excellent cycling performance (900 cycles). Furthermore, the EC fabrics are developed into a self-powered environmentally adaptive camouflage system to show real-world applications in active camouflage.