Zhu Mengjing, Li Huateng, Guo Qilin, Guo Jia, Wang Changchun
State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Department of Macromolecular Science, and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2024 Jun 26;16(25):32543-32553. doi: 10.1021/acsami.4c06766. Epub 2024 Jun 11.
Electrophoretic displays (EPDs) based on photonic crystals show great potential due to their reduced eye fatigue and low power consumption. However, the current image quality and service life of this system still face great challenges. In this work, we fabricated a new kind of electrically responsive photonic crystal (ERPC) device based on PSMA@SiO liquid colloidal crystals (LCCs) for EPDs. By introduction of the PSMA core with lower density and higher refractive index, the suspension stability and color saturation of PSMA@SiO LCCs were greatly enhanced compared with those of bare SiO LCCs. The PSMA@SiO LCCs showed brilliant colors, wide color tuning range (∼200 nm), and good reversibility under low voltages (<4 V). Interestingly, the transparency of PSMA@SiO LCCs could also be obviously regulated by an electric field, which was different from the traditional ways that change the thickness of PCs or contrast of refractive index (Δ) between the nanospheres and matrix. This transparency modulation offered a novel idea for the transmittance control of smart windows. As a proof of concept, we fabricated a new type of patterned ERPC device to demonstrate their potential in electrophoretic displays and smart windows with controllable transmittance under an electric field.
基于光子晶体的电泳显示器（EPD）由于其减少眼睛疲劳和低功耗而显示出巨大潜力。然而，该系统目前的图像质量和使用寿命仍面临巨大挑战。在这项工作中，我们基于用于EPD的PSMA@SiO液体胶体晶体（LCC）制造了一种新型的电响应光子晶体（ERPC）器件。通过引入具有较低密度和较高折射率的PSMA核，与裸SiO LCC相比，PSMA@SiO LCC的悬浮稳定性和色彩饱和度大大提高。PSMA@SiO LCC呈现出鲜艳的颜色、宽的颜色调谐范围（约200nm），并且在低电压（<4V）下具有良好的可逆性。有趣的是，PSMA@SiO LCC的透明度也可以通过电场明显调节，这与传统改变光子晶体厚度或纳米球与基质之间折射率对比度（Δ）的方式不同。这种透明度调制为智能窗户的透过率控制提供了一个新的思路。作为概念验证，我们制造了一种新型的图案化ERPC器件，以展示其在电场下具有可控透过率的电泳显示器和智能窗户中的潜力。
