Simple and Ultrafast Fabrication of Invisible Photonic Prints with Reconfigurable Patterns

Abstract Photonic prints integrated with invisible and reconfigurable patterns are highly desired due to their potential applications in combining anti‐counterfeiting, anti‐photobleaching, and low‐resource consuming. Here, a simple and fast approach is reported to fabricate invisible photonic prints, which are prepared by coating a layer of oleylamine (OAm) on the selective region of hydrophilic photonic paper. Owing to the different wettability and swelling ability between the pattern and background regions, the pattern of the as‐prepared sample is invisible (Δλ = 0) at normal conditions, while it can be revealed with a large color contrast (Δλ = 140 nm) in the presence of water with a very short time (≈2 s). The hiding–showing transition is fully reversible and the sample shows good performance in long lasting stability. With elaborate mask, the presented method is also capable of preparing microscopic invisible photonic print with high resolution. Moreover, the pattern of the invisible photonic print can be reconfigured repeatedly through the erasing and reconstructing process, which works well in macro/microscopic scale. The combination of invisible and reconfigurable properties as well as the invisible photonic prints with macro and microscopic patterns will facilitate their practical applications such as anti‐counterfeiting, message storage, and display.