Polymer opal with brilliant structural color under natural light and white environment

The structural color films with enough brilliant color have attracted a special attention because of the great advantages in some practical application, which has currently become a research hot-spot. But their simple fabrication is still a great challenge. This study presents brilliant polymer opal structural color films (PSCFs) from polystyrene spheres under natural light by using a simple preparation and assembly strategy. In this strategy, the black organic dye water solution was used as the dispersion medium for polystyrene spheres, and then polystyrene spheres were rapidly fabricated to one ordered structures by the thermal assistance self-assembly method, which is cheap and commonly available. Contrast to other many structural color films irradiated by external light source under black background, the PSCFs exhibit brilliant and tunable structural colors under natural light even in a white environment, which is significant for the potential application of PSCFs in paint, photonic paper, external decoration of architectures, display, and bioassay.