Wrinkled Photonic Elastomers with Dynamic Structural Color Patterns for Multilevel Optical Anti-Counterfeiting

Structural colors generated by interference, diffraction, or light scattering offer vivid visual effects without dyes or electronic components, making them promising for flexible optical sensing. This work reports a simple stretch-plasma-release (S-P-R) strategy to fabricate wrinkled photonic elastomers (WPEs). The flexible periodic structures exhibit mechanically responsive structural colors, as tensile strain alters the grating period, generating optical signals that can be visualized and quantified by spectroscopy. The wrinkle period is tunable in the range of 0.4-3.42 μm by adjusting plasma power, exposure time, pre-stretch ratio, and film thickness. A dumbbell-shaped substrate design reduces edge-induced stress concentration. It shows improved wrinkle uniformity, with the coefficient of variation reduced from 6.64% to 2.74%, and experimental colors agreeing well with modified Bragg condition predictions. The reflection peak shows a significant shift from 356 nm to 658 nm with varying viewing angles. Patterned plasma treatment enables the selective generation of wrinkled structures, producing bright color patterns. The structural color can be fully erased at a critical strain of 20% and recovered upon release, remaining stable over multiple loading-unloading cycles. With excellent mechanical compliance and optical tunability, these materials are well-suited for integration with hydrogel-based systems and show promise for wearable devices, security marking, and anti-counterfeiting applications.