Roll-to-roll fabrication of touch-responsive cellulose photonic laminates

Hydroxypropyl-cellulose (HPC), a derivative of naturally abundant cellulose, can self-assemble into helical nanostructures that lead to striking colouration from Bragg reflections. The helical periodicity is very sensitive to pressure, rendering HPC a responsive photonic material. Recent advances in elucidating these HPC mechano-chromic properties have so-far delivered few real-world applications, which require both up-scaling fabrication and digital translation of their colour changes. Here we present roll-to-roll manufactured metre-scale HPC laminates using continuous coating and encapsulation. We quantify the pressure response of the encapsulated HPC using optical analyses of the pressure-induced hue change as perceived by the human eye and digital imaging. Finally, we show the ability to capture real-time pressure distributions and temporal evolution of a human foot-print on our HPC laminates. This is the first demonstration of a large area and cost-effective method for fabricating HPC stimuli-responsive photonic films, which can generate pressure maps that can be read out with standard cameras.