Structural colors have a demonstrated value in constructing various functional materials. Efforts in this area are devoted to developing stratagem for generating heterogeneous structurally colored materials with new architectures and functions. Here, inspired by icing process in nature and ice-templating technologies, we present freeze-derived heterogeneous structural color hydrogels with multiscale structural and functional features. We find that the space-occupying effect of ice crystals is helpful for tuning the distance of non-close-packed colloidal crystal nanoparticles, resulting in corresponding reflection wavelength shifts in the icing area. Thus, by effectively controlling the growth of ice crystals and photo-polymerizing them, structural color hydrogels with the desired structures and morphologies can be customized. Other than traditional monochromatic structure color hydrogels, the resultant hydrogels can be imparted with heterogeneous structured multi-compartment body and multi-color with designed patterns through varying the freezing area design. Based on these features, we have also explored the potential value of these heterotypic structural color hydrogels for information encryptions and decryptions by creating spatiotemporally controlled icing areas. We believe that these inverse ice-template structural color hydrogels will offer new routes for the construction and modulation of next generation smart materials with desired complex architectures.

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Vapor-liquid phase change is regarded as an efficient cooling method for high-heat-flux electronic components. The copper-water bent heat pipes are particularly suited to the circumstances of confined space or misplaced heat and cold sources for high-heat-flux electronic components. In this paper, the steady and transient thermal performance of a bent copper-water heat pipe is studied based on a performance test system. The effects of cooling temperature, working conditions on the critical heat flux, and equivalent thermal conductivity have been examined and analyzed. Moreover, the influences of heat input and working conditions on the thermal response of a bent heat pipe have also been discussed. The results indicate that the critical heat flux is enhanced due to the increases in cooling temperature and the lengths of the evaporator and condenser. In addition, the critical heat flux is improved by extending the cooling length only when the operating temperature is higher than 50°C. The improvement on the equivalent thermal by increasing the heating length is more evident than that by increasing cooling length. It is also demonstrated by the experiment that the bent copper-water heat pipe can respond quickly to the variation of heat input and possesses superior transient heat transfer performance.