The most important properties of noniridescent structural colors of amorphous photonic structures (APS) are sufficient color brightness and saturation, which are difficult to be optimized simultaneously. Herein, highly saturated and brilliant noniridescent structural colors are achieved by introducing graphene nanosheets, which contain a fraction of graphene quantum dots (GQDs), into the short‐range ordered APS. The effective modulation of the photoluminescence (PL) of GQDs by the selective enhancement of absorption at the blue pseudo photonic bandgap edges of the APS boosts the PL with wavelength matching that of the photonic bandgap and thus enables high structural color brightness; the uniform light absorption of graphene nanosheets in the whole visible spectra contributes to the high color saturation. Furthermore, by using APS films with short‐range order as templates, a brilliant colorful humidity sensor is demonstrated. Compared with the conventional sensing platform based on photonic crystals, the humidity sensor with brilliant noniridescent structural colors is more convenient by avoiding the confusing color dependence on the viewing angles. The improvement in the structural color brightness of the APS films by facile graphene doping will facilitate their practical applications in fields of decorations, packaging, pigments, sensors, displays, or other color‐related areas.
A novel 3D printing procedure is presented for fabricating carbon-nanotubes (CNTs)-based microsupercapacitors. The 3D printer uses a CNTs ink slurry with a moderate solid content and prints a stream of continuous droplets. Appropriate control of a heated base is applied to facilitate the solvent removal and adhesion between printed layers and to improve the structure integrity without structure delamination or distortion upon drying. The 3D-printed electrodes for microsupercapacitors are characterized by SEM, laser scanning confocal microscope, and step profiler. Effect of process parameters on 3D printing is also studied. The final solid-state microsupercapacitors are assembled with the printed multilayer CNTs structures and poly(vinyl alcohol)-HPO gel as the interdigitated microelectrodes and electrolyte. The electrochemical performance of 3D printed microsupercapacitors is also tested, showing a significant areal capacitance and excellent cycle stability.
Structural colors have profound implications in the fields of pigments, displays and sensors, but none of the current non-iridescent photonic materials can restore their functions after mechanical damage. Herein, we report the first self-healable organogel nanocomposites with angle-independent structural colors. The organogel nanocomposites were prepared through the co-assembly of oleophilic silica nanoparticles, silicone-based supramolecular gels, and carbon black. The organogel system enables amorphous aggregation of silica nanoparticles and the angle-independent structural colors in the nanocomposites. Moreover, the hydrogen bonding in the supramolecular gel provides self-healing ability to the system, and the structural colored films obtained could heal themselves in tens of seconds to restore storage modulus, structural color, and surface slipperiness from mechanical cuts or shear failure repeatedly.
The first physically unclonable anti-counterfeiting label based on structural colors was enabled by interfacing amorphous photonic structures with artificial intelligence.
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