Facile fabrication of mechanochromic-responsive colloidal crystal films

This paper presents a simple approach to fabricate a reversible mechanochromic-responsive crystal film based on the room-temperature film-formation of monodisperse polymer latex by the aid of nanosilica particles. In this approach, when the "soft" colloidal polymer spheres were blended with colloidal silica particles and then cast on a substrate, followed by drying at room temperature for self-assembly, an elastic crystal film was directly obtained. This crystal film has not only reversible and repeatable mechanochromic-responsive property, but also tunable color and peak position covering almost entire visible spectral region, depending upon the sizes of polymer spheres and strains. This optical response is attributed to the variation of lattice spacing during deformation.