Infiltration-Assisted Assembly of Flexible Noniridescent Amorphous Colloidal Arrays on Exfoliated Graphene Laminates for Structural Color Applications

Amorphous colloidal arrays (ACAs) have stimulated considerable interest owing to noniridescent structural colors and feasibility in color mixing. Here, we develop a method for the rapid fabrication of a flexible structural color material based on ACAs by means of infiltration-assisted colloidal assembly, using exfoliated graphene (EG) laminates as infiltration substrates. Due to their advantageous properties, EG substrates can facilitate amorphous colloidal assembly and enhance the color visibility, making fast manufacturing of structural colors possible. Meanwhile, we reproduced the yellow and red colors that are absent in natural photonic glass using SiO2 ACAs and then realized a full-spectrum structural color with polydopamine (PDA)-grafted SiO2 ACAs; by comparing the SiO2 and PDA-grafted SiO2 ACAs, the color production of ACAs can be understood further. Moreover, our method based on graphene laminates may inspire a strategy to impart graphene and its derivatives with novel optical properties by integration with ACAs for structural color applications.